Saint Damien of Molokai

Jozef De Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, the son of a farmer. He joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, taking the name Damien, and in 1864 took his brother's place on a mission to the Kingdom of Hawaii, where he was ordained a priest. In Hawaii, leprosy, now called Hansen's disease, was spreading, and the government sent those infected to an isolated settlement at Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, cut off by high cliffs. In 1873 Damien volunteered to go there. He found the residents living in poverty and neglect. He built houses, a church, an orphanage and a water system, dressed wounds, made coffins and dug graves, and pressed the government for supplies. He also taught and organized the residents. In 1884 he discovered he had caught the disease himself. He kept working, and in his last years was joined by helpers, including Marianne Cope, a Franciscan sister from New York, and a Civil War veteran, Joseph Dutton. He died at Kalaupapa in 1889, at forty-nine. The writer Robert Louis Stevenson defended his memory against a critic. He was canonized in 2009.

Faith: Catholic missionary priest who devoted himself to the lepers deported to Molokai, Hawaii. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)