Posted on 02/22/2009 6:06:59 PM PST by KJC1
WAILUKU -- Just after midnight in Rome on Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI made the final announcement many Hawaii residents have wanted to hear for more than a century.
The pope will canonize Blessed Damien of Molokai as a saint Oct. 11 at the Vatican, according to an e-mail from the Very Rev. Marc R. Alexander of the Honolulu Roman Catholic Church Diocese.
Damien ministered to leprosy patients on Kalaupapa in the 19th century, ultimately contracting the then-fatal disease. The pope had previously declared in July that Damien would become a saint, after the church officially attributed to Damien the two miracles required for sainthood.
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In 1873, the 33-year-old priest arrived on the remote north coast peninsula of Molokai to serve victims of leprosy, now called Hansen's disease, who were forced to live in the colony. The living conditions and treatment of the people were harsh at the time, and Kalaupapa's more-than 800 residents lived in near chaos.
"He went to a place with no law and he created one law: the law of love," Keohi said. "And he lived it to the end."
Damien and his order are credited with significantly improving the patients' lives, by bringing order as well as food, fresh water, health care, education and compassion. The former carpenter improved living quarters and built his own church, St. Philomena.
"He went there (to Hawaii) knowing that he could never return," Father Alfred Bell, who spearheaded Damien's canonization cause, told Vatican Radio. "He suffered a lot, but he stayed."
(Excerpt) Read more at mauinews.com ...
The school was run by the Sacred Heart fathers, mostly from Ireland.
In 1967 they changed the name to Damien, after father Damien. The same day, the city of La Verne, which hated the name with Pomona in it, changed the street to Damien in honor of the school changing it's name.
My guess the school will be called St. Damien next year.
PS, every year the priests used to show a movie Damien the Leper staring Victor Jory.
crowed = crowded
Good for Father Damien!!!! He certainly did the Lord’s work-—so much that many would NEVER have done and did it without blinking. God Bless him!
An amazing and inspirational man.
Kind of a sad picture...
If you are Catholic, it takes an act of the Church to make you a saint.
Yet the Apostle Paul called all believers “saints”.
Who is right?
And I don’t intend to take anything away from Father Damien... I don’t know him, nor his work.
Oh cool! That will be my and SirKit's 34th wedding anniversary.
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