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The saints

St. Damien of Molokai

A Belgian priest who went to the leper colony on Molokai, and one day began a sermon with “we lepers.”

Feast: 10 May (feast on the U.S. calendar) · 1840 to 1889 · The modern era · Belgium and Molokai, Hawaii

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Black-and-white photograph of St. Damien of Molokai in a wide-brimmed hat and dark cassock.

William Brigham, 1889. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Damien of Molokai

Kalaupapa, Molokai, 1873

Damien was a Belgian priest who went as a missionary to Hawaii.1

People with leprosy were being exiled to a remote peninsula on Molokai, with little care.1

Damien volunteered to go, and stayed sixteen years.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church remembers him as the priest who gave his life for the lepers of Molokai.

01St. Damien of Molokai

We lepers

He built homes, a church, a school and coffins, and dressed wounds himself.1

He caught the disease, and kept working until he died of it.1

Live it this week

Touch the untouchable

Damien dressed the wounds of lepers. This week, do something hands-on for someone others avoid: visit someone with dementia, sit with the dying, talk with someone on the street.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Damien de Veuster of Moloka’i”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.