Blessed Damian exemplifies the heroicity of virtue and sacrifice that is the mark of a saint. I hope his canonization occurs soon.
Father Damien's Order in India has been invloved in helping Lepers for the last 50+ years in Eastern India.
They are very popular in Calcutta that is the Congregation of the Sacred Heart.
Can I post a story of a Polish Missionary who passed away last week in Eastern India in his 90's. He was a Polish Divine Word Missionary who came to Eastern India in the 1930's only to serve the suffering lepers of Orissa and he did that for over 55 years till his death.
This Polish Missionary who passed away last week is called "The Apostle of Lepers of Eastern India".
Let me know whether I should post this story.
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May 10, 2006
Blessed Damien of Molokai
(1840-1889)
When Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840, few people in Europe had any firsthand knowledge of leprosy (Hansen's disease). By the time he died at the age of 49, people all over the world knew about this disease because of him. They knew that human compassion could soften the ravages of this disease. Forced to quit school at age 13 to work on the family farm, six years later Joseph entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, taking the name of a fourth-century physician and martyr. When his brother Pamphile, a priest in the same congregation, fell ill and was unable to go to the Hawaiian Islands as assigned, Damien quickly volunteered in his place. In May 1864, two months after arriving in his new mission, Damien was ordained a priest in Honolulu and assigned to the island of Hawaii. In 1873, he went to the Hawaiian government's leper colony on the island of Molokai, set up seven years earlier. Part of a team of four chaplains taking that assignment for three months each year, Damien soon volunteered to remain permanently, caring for the people's physical, medical and spiritual needs. In time, he became their most effective advocate to obtain promised government support. Soon the settlement had new houses and a new church, school and orphanage. Morale improved considerably. A few years later he succeeded in getting the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, led by Mother Marianne Kope, to help staff this colony in Kalaupapa. Damien contracted Hansen's disease and died of its complications. As requested, he was buried in Kalaupapa, but in 1936 the Belgian government succeeded in having his body moved to Belgium. Part of Damien's body was returned to his beloved Hawaiian brothers and sisters after his beatification in 1995. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, it selected Damien as one of its two representatives in the Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. Quote:
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