From a respectable and religious family in Belgium, Josef de Veuster-Wouters (born January 3, 1840) was encouraged to enter the world of business and even began studies aimed at such an end. However, in 1859 he decided to follow in his brother's path by entering the Fathers of the Sacred Heart.

Desiring to work in the Pacific Islands, he found an opportunity two years later when a bishop from Hawaii lectured in Paris expressing his desire to take priests back with him. Damien was immediately dealt two blows: he was not yet a priest and so could not go, and, his brother Pamphile was chosen. When Pamphile caught typhus and was deemed too weak to make the voyage, Damien, after a direct appeal to the Superior General, was sent in his place. The year was 1863, the month November.

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Explorers had previously taken with them a variety of diseases, and one in particular (leprosy) was so worrisome that by 1865 a decision had been made by the Hawaiian governing authorities to isolate all those who had caught the sickness. By sending such people to the northern coast of Molokai, thus dealing with the risk of the leprosy spreading, the particular plight of the now forever-isolated sufferers seemed no longer a priority for the authorities. The quality of life became so poor that the translated statement 'In this place, there is no law,' came to be an apt description of the peninsula inhabited by leprosy sufferers.

Damien arrived in Honolulu in March of 1864, but it was almost 10 years before he became aware of the situation in Molokai. Upon attending a consecration of a new church in Maui he heard Bishop Maigret speak of the plight of leprosy sufferers and how a priest was needed to minister to them. Damien volunteered.

When he landed just a few days later, on May 11th 1873, Damien was met by a population dirty and disfigured, many of whom, because of the advanced stage of their leprosy, had stumps in place of hands and feet. Kalawao, the first leper village Damien visited, was inhabited by a people miserable, scared and suspicious, a people expecting Damien not to stay. Damien slowly won their trust, partly because he already knew their language, but particularly because he appeared unfazed by their appearance.

Damien had a very hot temper which did serve him well at times, particularly early on when he was attempting to re-establish order. This temper, when combined with a stick wielded as a weapon, was instrumental in returning order to Kalawao.

Damien bombarded the government in Honolulu with letters requesting all sorts of needed supplies, and just as order began to improve so also did the quality of life there. Damien had some of the fitter men clear land and plant sweet potatoes. The result was so good that the surplus potatoes were sold and the income generated was used for other needs. With no judge, police, teacher, doctor, nurse, farmer or builder, Damien was kept very busy, but as articles began to appear showcasing his results, and as his fame spread, help slowly came.

His request for housing materials was finally answered when a typhoon hit Molokai destroying the huts and forcing the government to send aid in the form of supplies. But no manpower was provided, so Damien and a crew of eight proceeded to build 300 houses. He had by now lived a year

on the island, always sleeping under a tree, but now he also had living quarters. Next Damien tackled the water source, which, though clean, was too far away. After a month Damien had installed a piping system all the way to the village. In 1881, the Prime Minister and the sister of the King of the Hawaiian Islands visited, and later the Queen herself, came. Both visits resulted in supplies being pledged and delivered. Also, a doctor came, as did a religious brother, even an impoverished Anglican vicar sent a significant sum, and finally, in 1888, the help from the Franciscan sisters that Damien had long been awaiting, finally arrived.

Eventually bedridden with the leprosy he had been suffering from for almost five years, Damien died on April 15, 1889. He was forty-nine years old.

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Damien's successes and celebrity status had long bothered many, and so difficult a man had he been that Bishop Koeckmann eventually refused to keep sending him replacement help, reasoning that a less quarrelsome Damien might prevent the growing number of those leaving him, from departing.

However, just months after Damien's death, when the Rev. C.M. Hyde's letter was published identifying Damien as "a coarse dirty man, headstrong, and bigoted," accusing him of violating his vows, and expressing overall surprise that Damien should be seen as a "saintly philanthropist," one Robert Louis Stevenson, who was by now settled in Samoa, respond-ed unambiguously.

The novelist appeared so bothered that though Hyde appeared to have acted with kindness towards him on more than one previous occasion, Stevenson now responded that his letter of rebuttal would represent the last correspondence he would ever have with the man.

Hyde perceived Damien as 'dirty.' Stevenson responded sarcastically saying 'he was.' Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this dirty comrade. But the clean Dr. Hyde was at his food in a fine house.' Hyde perceived Damien as 'coarse' to which Stevenson conceded the possibility, then suggested that Peter and John the Baptizer were hardly gentle and asked, "but you, who were so refined, why were you not there, to cheer them [the lepers] up with the lights of culture?"

Regarding the charge that Damien was not faithful in his vows, Stevenson claimed to have heard this rumour once before in Samoa when a man from Honolulu volunteered the details only to be shouted down by an angry hearer who allegedly was on Stevenson's record as saying:

"You miserable little [expletive]. If the story were a thousand times true, can "t you see you're a million times lower [expletive] for daring to repeat it."

Point by point Stevenson deconstructed Hyde's letter, eventually reducing Hyde's entire argument to one of jealousy, and expressing overall surprise that Hyde should still seek to be heard.

"Your Church and Damien's were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to go well" to help, to edify, to set divine example. You having (in one huge instance) faded, and Damien succeeded, I marvel that it should not have occurred to you that you were doomed to silence."

Serving in a leper colony run by priests, the atheist Doctor Colin remarks in Graham Greene's A Burnt-Out Case, "sometimes I wonder whether Damien was a leprophil [a lover of the disease of leprosy, rather than the people suffering from it]. There certainly was no need for him to become a leper in order to serve them well." I do not think that Damien was a leprophil (the fact that he was so disgusted by the smell of the people, their huts, and their graveyard, and was forced to bring with him a pipe that smoked the strongest smelling tobacco he could find, seems to work in his favour here.) Regarding his contraction of the disease, he did originally set his own living space as being off limits, but his leprosy was inevitable the moment he concluded "every day I work with these people, touch them, clean their wounds, breathe the air they breathe. Every day I dig their graves and bury their dead. It's a bit silly to ban them from the house." While Damien's sacrifice was voluntary, a detail Hyde finds problematic, as Stevenson notes, at least according to the pulpits, so was Christ's.

On June 4, 1995, Damien was given the title Blessed by Pope John Paul II. A miracle cure of cancer, attributed to his intercession, was recognised by the Holy See in June 2008. Father Damian was 49 when he died on April 15, 1889. His canonization is expected in October 2008, when he will receive the title Saint Damien of Molokai.

Kelly Wilson, a Manitoban, is pursuing his B. Ed. degree at the University of Lethbridge, AB..