Father Damien's Legacy: Leader by Example and "Martyr of Charity"

Quick answer: Who was Father Damien?

Father Damien was a Belgian Catholic priest who in 1873 volunteered to serve people exiled with leprosy at the Kalaupapa settlement on Molokai, Hawaii. He built homes, water supplies, and orphanages there for 16 years, contracted the disease, and died in 1889 at 49. He was canonized in 2009.

Jozef De Veuster was born on January 3, 1840, in Tremelo, in rural Flemish Belgium, the youngest of seven children of a corn merchant. He joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, took the name Damien, and was sent to Hawaii as a missionary. Leprosy had spread through the islands, and in 1865 King Kamehameha V and the legislature passed an act to prevent its spread. From 1866 to 1969, about 8,000 Hawaiians were sent to the isolated Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokai. The bishop didn't want to order any one priest there "in the name of obedience," so volunteers were asked to rotate. Damien went, arriving on May 10, 1873, to a settlement of about 600 patients. He told them he had come as "one who will be a father to you." Conditions were so bad he called it a "living cemetery." Six months later he wrote to his brother, "I make myself a leper with the lepers." He stayed. He improved water, food, and housing, built churches and two orphanages, dressed wounds, and buried the dead, with help from other priests for only six of his 16 years there. King Kalakaua made him a Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalakaua. In December 1884 he put his foot in scalding water and felt nothing, a sign he had contracted the disease. He kept working until he was bedridden in March 1889, and he died on April 15, 1889, at 49. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1995, and Pope Benedict XVI canonized him on October 11, 2009.

Why it matters for leaders: Damien led by sharing every hardship with the people he served, right to the end.

Q: Where did Father Damien serve?

A: At the Kalaupapa leprosy settlement on Molokai, Hawaii, from 1873 until his death in 1889.

Q: When was Father Damien canonized?

A: On October 11, 2009, by Pope Benedict XVI.

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By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation