The Leper Who Became A Saint

The Leper Who Became a Saint

Who could have imagined that Jozef would one day be canonized as a saint? As the seventh child of a poor coin collector, he got the family leftovers. He didn’t have access to much education, and he did poorly in school. But he had a heart for the underdog. No one was surprised when Jozef applied to be a priest. Nor were they shocked that he was initially rejected as uneducated and unintelligent. When he applied to be a missionary, he was turned down as unsuitable. Only after they couldn’t find anyone else to go did they finally send him.

Jozef arrived in Hawaii in 1864, during a year of great panic. Leprosy had found its way to paradise, and it was spreading like wildfire among native Polynesians. Protestant missionaries said that this was God’s judgment on the licentious lifestyle of the islanders. American planters threatened to seize the islands by armed force if something wasn’t done.

Lepers were rounded up and shipped to a deserted peninsula on Molokai Island. It was isolated and windswept, accessible only by a mule trail over steep mountains. The lepers might as well have been dumped on the moon. In this place of sorrow, they waited to die in ramshackle huts amidst filthy squalor. A few Protestant missionaries and Catholic priests visited, but most quickly left.

About that time, Jozef remembered his ordination as a priest. His superiors had covered him with a funeral pall to symbolize his death to the world. When he begged his bishop to go to the leper colony as its resident priest, he was signing his death warrant. When he left for Molokai, he knew he was never coming back. Outside of Jesus, no one ever loved lepers more than Jozef. He built a church with his own hands, dug a reservoir, founded a school, and brought stability. He made coffins and dug the graves for six hundred lepers. Maybe he loved them too much when he kissed them on their lips, shared his tobacco pipe with them, and dipped his fingers in their poi—a traditional dish made of mashed taro root. But he cared more about the outcasts than he did about hygiene. It wasn’t long before he turned a place of sorrow into a sanctuary of hope.

A decade after he arrived, he accidently put his foot in scalding water. When he saw the blisters but felt no pain, he immediately sent word to his superiors, “I have leprosy. Please send a confessor.” He ministered four more years while his body was eaten away. In his last weeks he wrote a letter to his brother: “I thank God very much for letting me die of the same disease and in the same way as my lepers.” The world remembers Jozef by the name he took when he became a priest, Father Damien. When he died, church bells rang in mourning across the islands. Every year, Hawaiians celebrate the memory of this Belgian priest. In 2009, he was canonized as Saint Damien. He is called the patron saint of those with leprosy, HIV, and AIDS. His service to the sick and outcast continues to be a source of inspiration to people worldwide. When we are reluctant to identify with those Jesus called “the least of these,” we might want to remember this:

Each sick and outcast person is really Jesus in disguise.

The King will say, “I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!”

Matthew 25:40