Father Damien de Veuster, still celebrated, is only one of many heroes Kalaupapa produced
Heroes and martyrs and saints, oh my.
One of them is featured in a cameo further back in this paper. Some ring a bell from schooldays stories or “patron saint of” lists. Many may seem obscure to people caught up in the twitch and twitters of 21st century time who more likely equate “hero” to violent characters populating dark television shows and movies today.
The saints are dead and their history, inspiring though it may be, is behind us. So ho-hum, right?
Nope, not in the case of the heroic Hawaii saint whose name is known well outside the Catholic crowd, and whose role in Hawaiian history is still celebrated far beyond these small islands.
The peak of popular recognition for Father Damien de Veuster was in October 2009 when he was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican with a few hundred Hawaii residents among the crowd of thousands in St. Peter’s Basilica and Square. The festivities continued with events at Iolani Palace grounds and on all islands.
The celebration will continue next month to honor the Belgian missionary who died in 1889 in Kalaupapa after 16 years of serving leprosy patients banished to the remote Molokai peninsula. He contracted the disease and was among more than 8,000 people who died there during the 100-year quarantine that ended in 1969.
New York City
In a May 11 ceremony in New York City, a one-block segment of 33rd Street will be designated “Father Damien Way” in an event planned by officials from Belgium and the New York archdiocese. The location is near the Mid-Atlantic Regional Hansen’s Disease Center at Bellevue Hospital, where new patients with the disease are treated with medications that halt its disfiguring, disabling effects.
Kalaupapa residents Clarence “Boogie” Kahilihiwa and his wife Ivy will attend the New York celebration along with Father Lane Akiona, pastor of St. Augustine Church in Honolulu and Father Bill Petrie, pastor of St. Damien Church on Molokai, both members of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, to which Damien belonged.
“Father Damien’s legacy of faith, compassion and dedication for the most vulnerable among us is an inspiration to us all. He was a priest and a healer, a community leader and early human rights activist, and a catalyst for the current movement to eradicate neglected infectious diseases,” said Nicolas Polet, in an email as communications director of Flanders House, the diplomatic delegation from the Belgian province where Damien was born.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is expected to participate along with the Minister-President of Flanders Geert Bourgeois. Anyone who happens to be in New York is free to come on down to join in the May 11 event at 1:30 p.m. at the Chapel of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary on East 33rd Street near 1st Avenue. See flandershouse.org for details of events that weekend.
“I think people want to hear from patients. We make Kalaupapa real,” said Kahilihiwa, who at 74 is one of the youngest of 17 former Hansen’s disease patients who still make Kalaupapa home. “I used to be shy about talking but not anymore,” he said. He makes several speaking appearances at schools and groups each year, and as an employee at the National Park Service bookstore, meets people who visit the peninsula daily.
Honolulu
Meanwhile, back in Honolulu, the annual Damien Day observance on May 10 — the liturgical feast marks the date of his arrival in Kalaupapa — will include songs and lei-draping at the Damien statue at the State Capitol. Anyone is welcome to join what is traditionally a small crowd of Catholic school students, religious and clergy; details to follow in the Hawaii Catholic Herald.
But the story of heroes and saints at Kalaupapa is bigger than Damien and Mother Marianne Cope, the Franciscan nun who was also named a saint for her service to the patients for 30 years until her death there in 1918.
If you missed the April 20 screening of “The Soul of Kalaupapa: Voices of Exile” at St. Augustine Church, it’s available free online at the Brigham Young University website. It’s a contemporary collection of interviews with patients and others who live and work there.
“The people who lived there, the history of the place, has so much to teach us,” said Fred Woods, co-producer of the film and a BYU professor of religious understanding. “It’s sacred turf. You feel the presence of God there,” said the professor, who spent the past few weeks in Hawaii doing research and speaking on the subject to several groups.
He was tracking island history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on his first visit in 2003, and has continued and expanded his research with a passion ever since. Woods had an awakening vision of the inclusive, openminded character of the people who served there as he learned about Jonathan Napela, who became the community’s Mormon leader when he voluntarily accompanied his wife when she was sent into quarantine in 1873, the year Damien also arrived.
He said Napela and Damien became friends, just a beginning of the spirit of interfaith cooperative service that flourished in the midst of the suffering and needy population, and a marked contrast to the competition for souls that flourished among Catholics, Protestants and Mormons outside.
Woods characterizes it as “a tapestry of brotherhood” which continues. He tells of recent years, when the Mormons — who were an estimated 10 percent of the patient population — rebuilt their chapel, and when the Congregationalists launched the restoration of the original Christian church, Siloama. The volunteers were always a mixed interfaith workforce.
“This is true Christianity,” said the professor, demonstrated by their “finding common ground to serve one another and in their pure, transparent relationship with our God.”
Kalaupapa
Not very Christian of me to say, but the story of Kalaupapa is bigger than any religion, too. A current event at the scene this weekend is a meeting of Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa leaders. The group of patients, their family members and supporters was founded a few years ago to help keep the story of the place alive.
The group has taken exhibits of historical photographs from the isolated settlement and given public presentations to community groups and schools on all islands except Niihau. Currently, there’s an historical exhibit at the Office +of Hawaiian Affairs offices and at the Molokai Museum and Cultural Center.
They are in the process of creating a museum to chronicle the movement to save Hale Mohalu, the state’s former patient care center in Pearl City. It will be open to visitors in the home of the late Bernard Punikaia, a patient activist leader among those arrested for resisting the state’s closure of the facility in 1983.
Valerie Monson of the Ohana said “We’ve done research for more than 500 families” seeking information on ancestors who died in Kalaupapa. “It’s one of the most rewarding parts of our mission. It’s just exciting to be doing this type of living preservation work.”
The group is close to completing its last bureaucratic hurdle to build a monument near St. Philomena’s Church, which Damien completed. The memorial structure will list the names of the 8,000 people forced into isolation. Information is on the Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa website.
Many of those whose names were kept in state Department of Health records down through the years, lived lives of courage, dedication, suffering and accomplishments that surely qualify them as heroes. Arguably, they were martyrs to government fear of the disease and violation of their human rights.
And I am convinced there were even uncountable unidentified saints among them. God knows who they are.
