Monday, October 26, 2009

St. Damien - Artobiography

Art is no more than a collection of pigments arranged as the artist finds useful to convey his intentions. Art at the lower end simply conveys feelings, a girl on a beach or a tranquil river. But to me, at the higher end, art must aspire to do more. The best art has always informed and challenged. Some of the greatest shapers of our societies in the past have been artists who spoke out through their medium. Artobiography is the style I have developed to do precisely that, a form of mixed media where documents and words are layered onto a canvas and then sealed before over painting with oils.
When asked to create an art piece on Damien, I immediately decided that the piece should not be painted with soft hues, for there is nothing soft about leprosy, Molokai or the life Fr Damien lived. So the paint strokes were often delivered with edges and hard areas which do not try to gently mix with their surroundings. For that reason I chose to paint the older weathered Fr Damien rather than the softer images of him as a younger man. Fr Damien had hard edges as the letter penned by Robert Louis Stevenson indicates and as an artist I have not tried to romanticise him but rather to present him as the raw hard edged hero and Saint he was. Of course no man lives as an Island and the story of words behind the face seek to articulate the larger story. Sections of Robert Louis Stevenson’s letter are included, pieces about Fr Damien, the Island of Molokai and then other spurious pieces I put together regarding the disease of leprosy, its treatment and a call for us to de-stigmatise leprosy now.
Leprosy is easily curable today and no one should die of it, yet many do. The problem with leprosy is that it is located in underdeveloped countries. If the occasional celebrity were to contract leprosy its profile would be raised and soon the funding would be assigned to eliminate it altogether. But worst of all is the attached stigma it carries. This ignoble attachment has now been assigned to many suffering from AIDS, as though the disease were not enough. This painting speaks of bigotry, hate and ignorance and as an artist I am encouraged that this latest humanitarian effort by Don Mullan will help bring relief to those suffering from AIDS in South Africa through the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. Too often HIV/AIDS sufferers experience the very same bigotry, hatred, ignorance and ostracisation that Fr Damien and the lepers of Molokai experienced. Just as the message in this painting is about de-stigmatising leprosy – so for AIDS today. Let us de-stigmatise AIDS now. A variety of conventional and artobiographical art pieces may be viewed on the artist’s website www.artobiography.co.uk
Rev. Keith Drury
Limited edition of 100 prints available. Each signed and numbered by the artist.
Size A2 (490 x 594 mm)
Price: Framed - £245
Unframed - £195 (pp included)
For postal reasons it is best shipped unframed.
Purchase online or contact artist directly:
www.artobiography.co.uk

keith@artobiography.co.uk
Mobile: 44 (0) 78 6633 9920
Tel: 44 (0) 28 91811191

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Damien Welcomed ‘Home’

A koa case secures a 15-inch-long wooden reliquary that holds a tin box with a bone from Damien’s heel.
Relic arrival ‘unbelievable,’ emotional experience.
The Maui News: KIHEI - Maryanne Majszak was in tears after venerating the St. Damien relic at her parish at St. Theresa Church in Kihei. "I could feel him," she said, unable to say more as her eyes watered up. Patty Holbrook was also in tears at Saturday's relic veneration, although she had yet to pay respects to Hawaii's first saint. "This is unbelievable," said Holbrook, visibly moved. "What Damien did was the life of much more of a saint. . . . He inspired all of us to serve, no matter who we are." Following the Oct. 11 canonization of Father Damien de Veuster to St. Damien, a relic featuring a bone from his right heel has been making the trek from Rome to the U.S. Mainland to the Big Island and now to Maui.

Residents and visitors, Catholic and not, connected with Damien on Saturday, calling him an inspiration of faith and service to mankind. Known to much of the world as Damien the leper, the Sacred Hearts priest worked on Molokai for 16 years during the late 1800s, caring for Hansen's disease patients who were forced to live there. Damien's canonization comes 120 years after his death. He contracted Hansen's disease himself. Maui residents welcomed the Damien relic on the first of a three-day visit around the island with songs, dance, prayers, adoration and veneration. The saint's relic has been secured in a small tin box housed in a 15-inch-long wooden reliquary that travels in a larger koa case.

People at Saturday's relic visitations approached the case in different ways, some genuflecting, others bowing, some touching the case briefly and others placing their palms on it as they prayed in silence. The relic's first stop Saturday was at St. Theresa Church where the parish pastor, the Rev. Monsignor Terry Watanabe, led the congregation in applauding the Damien relic arrival. "We have welcomed Damien back home," Watanabe said. "Elevating Father Damien to Saint Damien is not meant merely to honor a long dead priest," read a booklet provided at St. Theresa for Saturday's Mass. "It is meant to hold him up as an example: To remind us that building a better world is neither beyond our abilities nor the sole province of governmental 'officialdom.' "We are not all meant to be saints. But we are meant to find Damien's virtues in ourselves and put them to work."

Cody Chai, 16, and Siosi Kolo, 14, were designated the official relic carriers for the Damien relic at St. Theresa. "It's a big responsibility," Chai said shortly before the relic was welcomed. "It's a blessing what Damien did." Kolo said Damien's life is an inspiration for young and old alike. "I think it's the best thing someone could do . . . serve others," he said. Nearly 300 people showed up at St. Theresa, and more than 300 participated in four hours of prayers and singing at Christ the King Church in Kahului. Keeping careful watch over the relic are men from a Catholic group called the Knights of Columbus. The color guard, dressed in white tuxedos, red-and-black capes and black hats with white or purple feathers, processed in and out of the churches with the relic. "We're basically keeping Saint Damien company," explained Ray Hart of the Knights of Columbus Fourth Degree Assembly Color Guard 2290. He and Larry Aberill have assumed the responsibility of escorting the relic throughout its three-day visit on Maui, including an overnight vigil in Hana. Hart, a Catholic convert, said he "adjusted to the thought" of escorting a part of a saint's body. "If there was any time I needed a saint, this is it," he said.

Early Christians started the tradition of relics as they gathered to worship in the catacombs near the graves of Christian martyrs. The tradition developed into the practice of burying a saint's bones in or under a church's altar. Damien's relic will eventually make its way Nov. 1 to the Catheral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu, where Damien was first ordained as a priest. The relic will be placed in a permanent glass case to the right of the church altar. All relic visitations and today's Maui Vicariate celebration beginning at 3:30 p.m. at the War Memorial Gymnasium are free and open to the public. A dinner for those who have presale tickets takes place from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

The Damien relic is being honored by people of many faiths and cultures. The Tongan community, for example, had the assistance of Aisea Lolesio Paunga, a 72-year-old choir director visiting from Tonga. Paunga said he was "impressed" by how well the Tongan choir from St. Theresa sang the song he had written to honor Damien. The Tongan Catholic community will sing the same song at today's celebration at the War Memorial Gymnasium. "It's amazing for me to have a senior director like him be here," said Loma Falekaono, the Tongan choir director at St. Theresa. "It's a good thing that we're learning from him." Another visitor at St. Theresa was Sathish Thurai, a native of India now living in San Jose, Calif. Thurai said he had never heard of St. Damien, but as a Catholic he was familiar with how much saints mean to the church. "Saints are a part of our lives," he said. "We always pray to saints to intercede in our lives." Thurai described Saturday's veneration as "awesome." St. Theresa parishioner, Stacy Chai, couldn't agree more. "I think it's really neat. It's an actual saint, and he's here."
By Claudine San Nicolas who can be reached at claudine@ mauinews.com.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer

No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.

Mozlink

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

'Leper priest' named among five new saints

President Obama hails canonisation of Fr Damien by pontiff
Irish Independant: Monday October 12 2009:
Pope Benedict created five new saints yesterday, including Belgian priest Damien who worked and died among Hawaiian lepers, earning the admiration of President Barack Obama who sent a message hailing Damien's canonisation. The US president was born in Hawaii, where Damien worked in the leper colony of Molokai, caught leprosy and died in 1889. Mr Obama said in a statement that Damien had "a special place in the hearts of Hawaiians".

"I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out," Mr Obama said, adding that the priest had "challenged the stigmatising effects" of the disfiguring disease. "In our own time as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Fr Damien's resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick," the president said.

Born Jozef De Veuster, Damien went to Hawaii when he was 23, and 10 years later began work among the lepers, "not without fear and repugnance" at first, the pope said. He got ill and was "a leper among the lepers" for the last four years of his life. The life of "Damien of Molokai" is well known to young US Catholics but his appeal stretches to members of the broader Christian community such as Mr Obama, who was baptised as an adult in the Trinity United Church of Christ. There is even a statue of Damien in the US Congress.

Belgium's King Albert and Queen Paola attended the ceremony in St Peter's, as did Polish President Lech Kaczynski, French premier Francois Fillon and Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos to celebrate new saints from their respective countries.

The pope also canonised Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski, archbishop of Warsaw when Poland rebelled against annexation by imperial Russia in 1863. Exiled to Siberia for 20 years by the czar, he was "a shining example for all the Church", the pope said. Dominican friar Francisco Coll Guitart, one of two Spaniards created a saint, preached in Catalonia in the 19th century and "reached the hearts of others because he transmitted what he himself lived with passion, which burned in his heart", said the pontiff.

The other is Brother Rafael Arnaiz Baron who became a Trappist monk and died at the age of 27 in 1938. France's new saint is Jeanne Jugan, venerated as Marie de la Croix. She worked with the poor and elderly, shedding all material possessions to become "a poor person among the poor" until her death in 1879.

by STEPHEN BROWN Irish Independent
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer

No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Hawaii's Father Damien Canonized


Damien Banner hanging from St. Peters Bascilica
VATICAN CITY — A decades-long push to see one of Hawaii's heroes become a saint was finalized here Sunday when Pope Benedict XVI canonized five people, including Father Damien, a 19th-century priest whose work with leprosy patients on a Hawaiian island was hailed by President Obama as an inspiration to those helping AIDS sufferers today.

More than 550 islanders made the 12,000-mile trek to Rome for the canonization of Hawaii's first saint, which comes 120 years after Father Damien's death in Kalaupapa from leprosy, now known as Hansen's disease.

The basilica's 20,000-seat capacity was filled quickly and thousands of others stood in the square, where they watched the Canon of Saints of the Roman Catholic Church ceremony on TV screens.

Among attendees were 11 of the remaining Hawaii residents sent to Kalaupapa after being diagnosed with the disease at a time when the state still quarantined those with leprosy.

"To have given his life for what he believed in. Oh, it makes me feel small," said Kalaupapa resident Elroy Makia Malo.

Hawaii resident Audrey Toguchi, 80, a retired teacher whose recovery from lung cancer a decade ago was called miraculous by the Vatican, also attended.

She had prayed to Belgium-born Jozef De Veuster, more commonly known as Father Damien, who died in 1889 after contracting leprosy while working with patients living in isolation on Molokai island.

Toguchi and her doctor, Walter Chang, joined a procession of faithful bringing relics of the new saints to Benedict at the central altar of the basilica.

Father Damien is the ninth person who has been elevated to sainthood for good works on what is now American soil.

The Rev. Christopher Keahi, the provincial superior for the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts in the Islands, said the canonization cause took hard work and prayer.

"I never dreamed Damien would be canonized in my lifetime. He is like an idol for me," said Sister Roselani Enomoto of Honolulu.

Obama said he learned of Father Damien while growing up in Hawaii. "As millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Father Damien's resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick," Obama said in a statement.

In Hawaii, residents of Kalaupapa, where Father Damien ministered to the sick, walked in a heavy mist, carrying a banner bearing his likeness, and celebrated a Mass in his honor.

And at Honolulu's Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, Mildred Jacoby, 77, of Kapolei, said it was "like heaven" to attend Mass in the church where Father Damien was first ordained.
By Mary Vorsino The Honolulu Advertiser
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Obama says St. Damien gave voice to voiceless, dignity to the sick

Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints Sunday in a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City (Getty Image).
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- President Barack Obama expressed his "deep admiration" for St. Damien de Veuster and offered his prayers for all those celebrating the priest's "extraordinary life and witness." He issued the statement Oct. 9, two days before the pope canonized the Belgian priest and four others at the Vatican.

“I wish to express my deep admiration for the life of Blessed Damien de Veuster, who will be canonized on Sunday by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. I also want to convey my best wishes to the Kingdom of Belgium and its people, who are proud to count Fr. Damien among their great citizens.

Fr. Damien has also earned a special place in the hearts of Hawaiians. I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out. Following in the steps of Jesus’ ministry to the lepers, Fr. Damien challenged the stigmatizing effects of disease, giving voice to the voiceless and ultimately sacrificing his own life to bring dignity to so many.

In our own time as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Fr. Damien’s resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick.

I offer my prayers as people of all faiths join the Holy Father and millions of Catholics around the world in celebrating Fr. Damien’s extraordinary life and witness.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Friday, October 9, 2009

Canonisation Here I Come

Dublin: Mozlink leaves for the canonisation in Rome tomorrow Saturday. Will be back on Tuesday to bring you the latest updates if I am unable to find the time to do some uploading while I am away. Remember to pray these days of canonisation, for the people today who are suffering in numerous Molokai's throughout the world.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Fr. Damien - First Hawaiian Saint


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Thursday, October 8, 2009

St. Damien: Find Your Own Molokai

America Magazine: The church will soon have a new saint. This Sunday, Oct. 11, Pope Benedict XVI will canonize St. Damien of Molokai (or St. Damien de Veuster). He may fairly be called--with not too much of a stretch--an "American" saint, an immigrant who came to work on what came to be American territory. In this way he is something like Mother Cabrini, the Italian-born immigrant who came to work with the poor in New York. And yes, I know Hawaii wasn't a state then, indeed an entirely separate nation (as one commenter pointed out). Nonetheless, we're happy to include St. Damien in our family of saints in the States. After all, both Portugal and Italy celebrate St. Anthony of Padua.

This comment from the Maui News caught my eye today: "You read about his story and realize he is very incredible. It took a man from way far away to more or less bring the Hawaiian people together and . . . bring all the people together to understand our cause and care for the people who suffered." That's Clarence Kahilihiwa, the son of parents who suffered from Hansen's disease. Mr. Kahilihiwa has a great love for the church's newest saint.

But even those who know only the barest scraps of his story understand that the life of Father Damien was an extraordinary one. And that raises a problematic question: What can the life of Father Damien (like "Blessed Teresa" it will take some time to begin to refer to him as "Saint Damien") say to us today?

Very few of us are going to enter religious order, leave our native country and work with the very ill and very forgotten. "Lepers," a detested term for those suffering from Hansen's disease, were reviled even in Biblical times: many of Jesus's most well-known miracles are those healing people suffering from "leprosy," though scholars tell us that this could refer to any variety of skin diseases. In Damien's day those suffering from Hansen's disease were banished to the island of Molokai. It was there that the Belgian-born Joseph de Veuster (he took the religious name Damien after joining the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary) went in 1873. Just a few years before, in 1864, Damien arrived in Hawaii and was ordained a priest in the cathedral in Honolulu. As is well known, Damien spent the rest of his brief life in Molokai ministering to the sick and marginalized until he too contracted Hansen's disease. He died in 1889, at the age of 49.

In a (perhaps unintentional) snub of the peoples of the island, Damien's body was exhumed and sent back to Belgium, where it is buried in a crypt in Louvain in 1936. Only recently, in 1995, did Pope John Paul II, on the occasion of Damien's beatification, send bones from his right hand back to Molokai to be reburied in his original grave. The final step to Damien's canonization came with the miraculous cure of a retired teacher in Hawaii named Audrey Toguchi.

The story of Damien, like the lives of so many saints, can seem while noble, largely irrelevant to our own. Yet by reading the saints' lives carefully one can always find profound resonances with the lives of everyday believers. What parent is not called upon to minister to a child when he or she falls ill, even at the risk of contracting an illness? Who among us is not called to stand with the outcast, with those whom polite society shuns either literally or metaphorically? Who is not called to do works of charity and love that may remain utterly hidden from the rest of the world. Think of the husband or wife caring for the spouse with Alzheimer's. Is this not a hidden act of charity? Think of the parent caring for a child with a cancer or an incurable illness. Even if the parent does not contract the illness, is this not a heroic deed? Damien is not as far from us as many would think.

When the faithful used to visit Mother Teresa and ask to work alongside her in Calcutta, she would sometimes say, "Find your own Calcutta." That is, care for the poor where you are. Perhaps the story of St. Damien says to us, "Find your own Molokai."
By James Martin, SJ
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Fr. Damien's FamilyToday

Meet members of Fr. Damien's family today in Belgium. KITV Hawaii visit Fr. Damien's hometown of Tremeloo, Belgium. Click >>>>>>>>>>>HERE to view video.
Click >>>>>>>>>>>HERE to view a video of the celebrations in Damiens home town.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Monday, October 5, 2009

New Website on St. Damien

The Flemish Belgium Province of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts have a new website on St Damien. Click >>>>>>>>>>>HERE go to new website.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink

Friday, October 2, 2009

DAMIEN’S SECRET

The canonization of St Damien, the apostle of the lepers, in St Peter’s Square in Rome on October 11 next will be of more than passing interest to many people in Ireland, not least the priests, sisters and brothers of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts (SS.CC.), the religious family to which the new saint belongs..

“A humble scene in a backward place/Where no one important ever looked” is how Patrick Kavanagh describes a locale in one of his poems. It is an apt description of an isolated spot called Kalaupapa on Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands where a 33-year-old priest volunteered to serve people suffering from leprosy – now known as Hansen’s disease – who had first been quarantined and then expelled to this lonely outpost. The leper settlement there has been described as “a suburb of hell”. There was no law or order in the place and a constant shortage of supplies, medical treatment and food. Housing for the suffering was totally lacking. These poor people had been totally abandoned.

It was here that the priest who will be canonised on October 11 next worked for 16 years, alone and unaided for more than a decade of those years. He cleaned and bandaged wounds, amputated gangrenous limbs, built more that three hundred simple homes, erected 8 churches and chapels, laid a pipeline to bring fresh water to the settlement, made – it is estimated – more that 1600 coffins without any outside assistance, dug graves and buried the dead. It was only shortly before his death that help arrived in the form of Franciscan nuns, as well as some priests from his Congregation and two lay stalwarts, Joseph Dutton and James Sinnett. “Brother Joseph” and “Brother James”, Damien called them.

A biographer described Damien as “a vigorous, forceful, impellent man with a generous heart in the prime of life and a jack of all trades, carpenter, mason, baker, farmer, medico and nurse, no lazy bone in the makeup of his manhood, busy from morning till nightfall”. He was constantly interceding with the authorities of church and state on behalf of his poor people and he was not too popular with these same authorities. His local superior once reported him to the Order’s central government in Europe for being “excessive in his demands on behalf of his lepers”.

It is almost impossible to grasp how one man could accomplish what Father Damien accomplished during his lifetime. There is, however, one aspect of his life that has received less attention. In spite of the extraordinary demands made on him, he reserved the first hours of every day for prayer and spiritual reflection. His constant companion was a 15th century devotional book, The Imitation of Christ, which called for humility and austerity and a continuing self-examination. Damien took the lessons of the book to heart; even when he was dying he continued to sleep on a straw mattress on the floor. “Let it be our chief study,” the Imitation counsels, “to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ …. Jesus has many lovers of his heavenly kingdom, but few who are willing to bear his cross”. How well Damien learned that lesson. This is a side of the new saint that is seldom referred to. This is Damien’s secret.

Sufferings there were in abundance in his life, physical and mental sufferings. He worried greatly because he had no spiritual director or regular confessor. Sometimes when a ship came close to Molokai with a priest on board, Damien would row out and shout his confessions up to the priest on board. This was as close as the law would allow him to approach. He was also aware of allegations of immorality made against him during his lifetime and, indeed, after his death. These accusations were caused by bigotry and envy but also by a wrong notion of the time that the disease of leprosy could be transmitted solely by sexual contact with someone suffering from the disease. The famous writer Robert Louis Stevenson took up the cudgels on Damien’s behalf in this regard and wrote an impassioned Open Letter to Dr Hyde which has become a classic.

Damien identified with the lepers. He smoked their pipes and ate from their dishes. It was only too inevitable that he would contract the disease himself. The moment of his awareness that he had contracted the disease is represented dramatically in many of the films made about his life. He was washing his foot in a basin of water and when he was finished with one foot and put his second foot in the basin he had to pull it out quickly for the water was almost boiling hot. It then dawned on him that he was now himself a leper. In his homilies at Mass in the settlement up to this time he addressed his congregation as “You, lepers” but on the next occasion he started with “We, lepers”.

Suddenly Damien, Molokai and the leper settlement there went from total obscurity to world wide recognition. Ghandi claimed that there were very few heroes to compare with him. The Prince of Wales had a memorial erected to his memory. In later years a massive sculpture would commemorate him in the Hall of Statuary in the US Capitol building. His name and work appeared on the front pages of the major world newspapers. King Leopold III of the Belgians requested that Damien’s remains be brought back to his native country. Pope Pius XI informed the king that the Church would be considering Damien for sainthood. President Franklin D Roosevelt despatched the troop carrier Republic to take the priest’s remains as far as the Panama Canal where it was transferred to the Belgian ship The Mercator for the long journey home.

There was only one problem with this worldwide recognition and Damien’s final journey home: it was against his own wishes. He had asked that he be allowed to await the day of Resurrection among his “beloved lepers”. It was certainly against the wishes of the lepers themselves who bade farewell to their beloved “Kamiano” with “wails and lamentations” as one newspaper of the day put it. John Paul II recognised this in 1995 when he entrusted the bones of Damien’s right hand to a delegation of lepers in Brussels to be returned to the saint’s original burial place on Molokai.

The great theologian of the last century, Karl Rahner, stated more than once that the church has a duty to proclaim the holiness of its greatest members precisely because it has the duty of proclaiming the grace of God and what that grace accomplishes in people like Damien. He, together with all the saints, including Mary Queen of Saints, everybody and every thing holy are signposts or fingers pointing beyond themselves to God, the source of all goodness and holiness. Unfortunately, as the old proverb puts it, “the fool sees only the finger”!

The numbers at the leper settlement on Molokai are down to twenty or so and a group of these will be on hand in St Peter’s Square in Rome on October 11 next to see their great hero canonised. St Kamiano of Molokai, pray for them and for all of us!
by: Bishop Brendan Comiskey, ss.cc.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink