Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 10, 1 October 2009 — A SAINT AMOUNG US [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A SAINT AMOUNG US

Makia Malo didn't always admire Father Damien. In fact, his earliest thoughts of the young Belgian who sacrificed his life tending to people with leprosy in Kalawao and Kalaupapa was that he wasn't too bright. "He eome Hawai'i just for catch leprosy and then die. (I thought) what kind is this?" Malo said. But over many years Malo, who was sent to Kalaupapa in 1947, following his kid brother in 1943 and his sister in 1945, started seeing and hearing more about Damien. Malo heard about the churches Damien built in topside Moloka'i and was taken to the wooden church that Father Damien built in Kalawao, where the late Bernard Punikaia

showed him the holes in the floor, fronting the pews, in whieh patients would expectorate while listening to Damien preach. He heard about how Damien's work there spanned more than offering religious comfort. "Damien was the only one it seems who was giving them any kind of aloha, whieh covered everything: physical care, medical care, the best they could with what they had," Malo said. But what sealed Damien as a hero in Malo's eyes was the "awesome decision" he made to "eome down to Kalaupapa and take care of the patients there." "I have so mueh aloha for that man," Malo said. "He practically cut himself off from the outside community and stayed in Kalaupapa because he knew that's where he needed them." Malo and 10 other former Hansen's disease patients will be part of a pilgrimage to Rome this month to witness Blessed Father Damien's elevation to sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI. Bishop Larry Silva of the Diocese of Honolulu will lead the 520-person pilgrimage from Hawai'i, whieh includes the former patients —

some of whom still live in the former Hansen's settlement of Kalaupapa — their caretakers, who are also known as kōkua, and members of the Catholie Church, among others. Born Joseph de Veuster in Tremeloo, Belgium, on Jan. 3, 1840, Damien lived more years in Hawai'i than in his native Belgium. He eame on a mission to Hawai'i in 1864, taking the plaee of his brother, who had fallen ill. In Damien's 25 years here, he immersed himself in the Hawaiian community. Before he went to Moloka'i, he worked in Kohala, Puna and Hāmākua, and "for nine years he lived among the Hawaiians, he spoke fluent Hawaiian, he could write Hawaiian, among other languages," said Patrick Downes, editor

of the Hawai'i Catholic Herald. His relationship with Native Hawaiians continued on the Kalaupapa peninsula - where an estimated 90 percent of the 8,000 people quarantined there over the course of a liūle more than a century were Native Hawaiian - a direct result of their high ssusceptibility to the disease. The disease was treatable by the late 1940s. Dr. Kalani Brady, who is traveling to Rome to provide medical support for the patients, said he considers one of Damien's first miracles to be that he contracted the disease. "In doing so became one with the patients," Brady said. "It was no longer 'us' and 'them'; it was lōkahi. And at that point, his ministry in Kalaupapa, because of his grace, humility and calling, blossomed." Brady noted that not many Caucasians are susceptible to the disease, in fact, no more than 5 percent of the world's population is. "That means that 95 percent of the population can't catch it even if they were to take an aerosol snort of the bacteria," he said. "The fact that he was one of the

ones susceptible, being Caucasian, was very unusual." Brady, who is one of three doctors to visit Kalaupapa and provide medieal care on a rotating basis, said that when Damien arrived in Kalawao, the iniīial settlement on the peninsula, he descended upon lawlessness. To that, Brady said, Damien brought compassion: "For those that were sick and unable to care for themselves, Damien cared for them. He embraced them, he cleaned ... and bandaged their wounds as they approached death. Being a carpenter, he built their coffins and then he dug their graves and buried them. For those that were not yet too sick but unfortunately were the powerless, he protected them, and that included the children, the girls

and the boys who otherwise were at risk of sexual slavery and abuse. For the women, he rescued and protected them. And because he was a priest, he sought to minister to the spiritual needs of this despondent people who lived without hope." Dr. Martina Kamaka, who also will be attending the canonization in St. Peter's Square, compares Damien's impact upon Native Hawaiians on par with that of the benefactors of ali'i trusts, like Bernice Pauahi Bishop, whose will created the Kamehameha Schools for the education of Native Hawaiians, and Queen Kapi'olani, who founded a maternity home that would become Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children. "(Damien) definitely has to be up there with the best of them," said Kamaka. "For me as a Native Hawaiian, I think all of us should know his story: Catholic or non-Catholic because he did so mueh for our people and he did it out of love and he had no personal gain for it. I'm hoping this canonization is just a little way for us to be able to say thank you to him for everything he did." ■

www.oha.org/kwo

cūver feature

By Lisa Asato • Public Information Specialist

k young Damien wilh girl patients in Kalawao. - Oamien photos: Courtesy ofthe Diocese ofHonolulu