VIEW FROM THE PEW
Why is it that we humans have this need to measure events, people, what’s important in life, by using numbers? How many years of life, of service, birthdays, anniversaries, we count them. Money counting is important, how much spent, saved, paid, stolen; and there’s the relentless daily stories about spending by lawmakers, government agencies, billionaires’ income, construction proposal price tags, bonuses for CEOs and athletes.
And we measure how many awards won, or songs performed, or books written, or distances run, climbed, driven, flown, sailed … or fallen.
Why do we do that? Is it the wow factor, the punchline, we love, or is it to cheer others toward achievements? I’m not sure.
Still, as one day this week became a notable number to celebrate, I fell into that mindset and began to use numbers to describe the Hawaii saint we are honoring.
But I came to realize that the heroism, the spirit, the story of the peasant priest who lived out what Jesus taught is immeasurable by numbers. As are the lives and works of those people who followed in his footsteps.
The Catholic Church is celebrating May 10 as the 150th anniversary of Father Damien de Veuster’s arrival in Kalaupapa. By 1873, leprosy had become an epidemic; the Hawaii government had quarantined its victims to an isolated Molokai peninsula since 1866. It was a dreadful, frightening time for those afflicted by the disease and those who loved and helped them.
And, we can imagine, also for the young priest when he stepped from a boat to shore after volunteering to minister to the suffering residents for a couple of weeks. Damien stayed for 16 years, contracted what is now called Hansen’s disease, and died in Kalaupapa, as did more than 8,000 others. What he did for the people he helped and how he wrote about his beloved fellow residents led the Catholic Church to name him a saint.
The setting for the May 10 public celebration of Damien is in Honolulu. Catholic school children draped lei and sang hymns at the famous statue at the State Capitol. That’s a joyful change in itself, since the dread pandemic of our time and a government ban on crowds paused the traditional feast day event for a couple of years.
Bishop Larry Silva presided at a 6 p.m. anniversary Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace.
The feast day was celebrated at daily Masses in Hawaii churches and was an optional memorial in the rest of the world. Readings deviated from the liturgy in the missals in the pews as pastors here could choose instead to use St. Paul’s letter to the Romans about God’s love poured into our hearts, the parable of the Good Shepherd from John’s Gospel, or the account of Jesus washing the feet of his Apostles.
Those familiar readings are so much better a measure of the humble, heroic saint than any numbers could be.
Molokai Catholics began their Damien celebration nine days ago with a tradition at the topside parish of St. Damien of Molokai. They gathered for daily prayers during the annual novena. Damien himself built two of the topside churches, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows and St. Joseph, still the scene of Sunday Masses.
On May 11, Bishop Silva traveled to Kalaupapa to celebrate a morning Mass at St. Philomena Church at Kalawao, the north end of the settlement. It had been a tiny chapel built by a Sacred Hearts brother, a short hike inland from Damien’s landing place, and was expanded by the builder priest. It has been packed with overflowing crowds for numerous festive events over the past 30 years marking steps in the sainthood process for St. Damien and St. Marianne Cope. This time the bishop arrived with a group of only six people, limited by state Department of Health controls for the COVID-19 pandemic.
A few visitors
“It will be a very low-key celebration since only a few visitors are allowed,” said Father Patrick Killilea, a week before the event. Kalaupapa’s pastor for 10 years, Father Killilea is the latest in a continuing line of priests from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary stretching back to Father Damien.
The Irish priest has a way with words and I want to borrow his description of the long history of caregiving that brought hundreds of people to help the patients at the settlement, from the first days of quarantine until today.
“Passing the baton” in a relay race is how Father Patrick described a recent change in state Department of Health and National Park Service administrators at the settlement. He described watching runners practice passing a baton with skill in a recent entry in his Kalaupapa Diary blog.
“It has helped me in my ministry as the baton of responsibility was passed on to me. I learned that if I fumbled the exchange, I had to recover and keep on keeping on.
“It is admirable to be a member of the relay team and to run the race. It is more important to be in tune with teammates and to carry the baton to victory,” he wrote.
“I have no plans of leaving,” said Father Killilea, a priest for 60 years, who came to Kalaupapa after “retiring” from service as pastor in mainland parishes.
Hundreds of people have worked in Kalaupapa, employees of the two agencies which are the governing entities at the peninsula, providing care for patients and maintaining the facilities of the village.
The settlement’s “bishop”
Hundreds of former Hansen’s disease patients chose to stay in Kalaupapa after 1969 when the quarantine was lifted after more than 100 years. The state guaranteed them housing and medical care for life. Eight of those “historic” patients are still alive.
One of them, Mele Watanuki, was busy cleaning at St. Philomena Church in the past week to prepare for the celebration Thursday. Watanuki, 89, is teasingly called “Bishop Mele” by the pastor. She serves as sacristan preparing the altar for daily Mass at St. Francis Church, the parish center in “downtown” Kalaupapa. Patients have traditionally held that role, she’s the latest in a long line of altar servers.
She was one of 11 patients who traveled to Rome for the canonization of St. Damien in 2009. They were among more than 500 Hawaii residents who made the pilgrimage. The disease that brought these special people unwillingly to Kalaupapa is now controlled by medication and, technically, they are former patients.
But “patient” is important self-identification for these hardy survivors and that is how they are singled out in any event like this week’s. They are the last to carry the baton, a race that started with fear and separation but ended with long life in a serene village full of friends.
“I really wanted the job,” said Frances Padeken, who retired in 2002 after 12 years working at the Kalaupapa hospital, one in a line of caregivers stretching back before Damien. There were about 100 patients when she was hired to take on maintenance work because “patients who had been doing the work were aging out.” The job evolved from janitorial to nursing aid and cooking for events and other chores.
“A friend asked how I could do the work,” Padeken recalled, as caregiving meant bandaging wounds, enemas, bathing frail folks. “I said someone has to do that kind of work. The patients were always so grateful and always thanked us.”
My introduction to Padeken, when I was in Kalaupapa as a reporter, was an invitation to what passed for a wild joy ride in the slow-paced community. Padeken and fellow nurse Joyce Nishimura would liberate hospital-bound patients for a ride around the four-square-mile peninsula. The state of dirt-packed lanes did not allow for much speed but I was thrilled to be in on the patients’ cheery storytelling.
“There wasn’t much else to do. We were revisiting places that brought them memories, so it was exciting,” said Padeken. Her husband endured her leaving their Oahu home for months’ long stints on Molokai. It was service shared by dozens of nurses over decades; no family could join them. To this day, only people who work in Kalaupapa may live there.
Descendants in spirit
Two Franciscan nuns are among today’s residents, both working at the grocery store and a National Park Service bookstore. Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities Alicia Damien Lau and Barbara Jean Wajda are descendants in spirit and service of Mother Marianne Cope, who brought nursing sisters to the settlement shortly before Damien’s death in 1889. They live in a historic building, which Mother Marianne established to house girls and single women. Mother Marianne was also named a saint for her work with the patients.
“I came for the first time in 1965 when there were hundreds of patients,” said Sister Alicia Damien. The Honolulu native chose her vocation as a Franciscan a year later, and her nursing career led to administration positions in healthcare facilities on the mainland and on Oahu.
“I have known a lot of people who found love and understanding living here,” she said. “It is a constant growing process for those who came. There are great memories; it was one big ohana.” Sister Alicia Damien shares the stories and insights of her many years in that big ohana with visitors.
Kalaupapa was envisioned as the destination for pilgrims after the canonizations, but COVID restrictions have slammed the door shut on that. Each resident may sponsor a few visitors for day visits but it is rare.
“My wish, and I ask the Lord each day to let me be here until the last patients … to help and support them,” said the Franciscan nurse.
The ohana’s histories
Valerie Monson, whose life and career have been focused on Kalaupapa residents for more than 30 years, now is dedicated to telling descendants of patients about them.
Now the administrator of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa, Monson was a news reporter when she first came to the settlement. Contracted early on to collect oral histories of the dwindling number of patients cemented her relationship with the special place.
She and others formed the non-profit Kalaupapa Ohana 20 years ago with the goal of finding and supporting people whose families lost connections with patients once they were banished. The group received $5 million from the state Legislature last year to build a long-planned monument to the 8,000 people who were quarantined to Molokai. Monson has no plan to retire until she sees the dedication of the monument with the names of all those people whose lives were the story of Kalaupapa.
Monson still remembers getting “chicken skin” at the words of the late Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, when he spoke to islanders who visited Damien’s homeland after the canonization. In remarks aimed at the 11 patients in the crowd, he said:
“We gave you a man; you returned him to us as a saint.”
