People freaked out about the leprosy and banished the lepers to a secluded spot. They were shipped food, but that was about it. The people of the leper colony were in a pretty bleak place. They were living in shacks, without medical treatment and with shaky attention to disposal of the dead. They had all the legal and substance abuse issues you might expect from a bunch of people who were sick, separated from loved ones, cut off from the world and going to die anyway.
The bishop of the region saw that these were people who needed help. He didn't want to order a priest to go, though, because of the safety issues. Father Damien, a Belgian priest, volunteered to go to Molokai to serve the lepers.
While he was with the colony (and the surrounding areas where people were in hiding with their families) Fr. Damien helped them build decent houses, working farms, health care clinics, a hospital, and schools. He encouraged them to respect basic laws and each other. Instead of giving them up for dead, he encouraged the people of the colony to live while they were still alive. He felt their standard of living and their dignity was precious. It was worth his life to him to show the people of that colony that they were loved -- and that they were worthy of being loved.
Eventually, Fr. Damien himself contracted leprosy and died. He was canonized a Saint in 2009.
Today, Fr. Damian is also the patron Saint of people who are HIV positive. Pope Benedict says of him that St. Damien "teaches us to choose the good fight -- not those that lead to division, but those that gather us together in unity."
More on Father Damien here: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=2817
and from a Hawaiian Catholic here: http://hicatholicmom.blogspot.com/2011/05/feast-of-st-damien-of-molokai-photos.html
I wish I had time to do his portrait more justice.
2 comments:
Good story, good art. Thank you
You always educate me.
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