Blessed Marianne Cope of Molokai to Become Saint Marianne

When Father Damien asked for assistance to care for the "lepers of Molokai," Sister Marianne Cope came. This week, she was canonized.



December 20, 2011. (Romereports.com) Benedict XVI has approved the canonization of seven blessed. Among them is the first Native American to ascend to the altars and the main colloborator of Father Damien.

The pope has recognized a miracle attributed to the intercession of each one of them. He has not officially called for their canonization but, he's expected to do so next fall.

One of the future saints is the Italian Giovanni Battista Piamarta, born in 1841 and founder of two religious orders.

Then there is the French Jacques Berthieu, a Jesuit priest shot to death in Madagascar in 1896 for defending Christianity.

Another is the Spanish nun Mary of Mount Carmel. In 1892 she founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception.

Also on the list is Marianne Cope, the nun who in 1888 traveled to Hawaii to help Father Damien of Molokai in the care of leprosy patients.

Possibly the most unique is the American Indian Katherine Tekakwitha, who in 1676 was marginalized by her tribe after converting to Christianity.

The teenager Pedro Calungsod will be the second saint in Philippine history. He was martyred in 1672 for defending missionaries.

The last on the list is Germany's Anna Schäfer, who always wanted to be a missionary. In 1901 she suffered burns on her legs, she was then bedridden for 24 years and offered her pain for the salvation of souls.
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Suffering and Faith, Hope, and Love

What should our response be to the unfortunate, those enduring some hardship or suffering?

We could ignore them, pretend that they do not exist. And that is a popular way to deal with such problems. To simply be blind to them. Or, we could take notice of them, but only for a moment, only long enough to banish the person who suffers, as happened to the "lepers" who were sent to the settlement at Kalaupapa on Molokai, only to be forgotten or thought of as already dead.

Another response is, instead of thinking of them as dead, to make them really dead. To eliminate the problem by eliminating the one who is causing us the discomfort of having to consider how to deal with them. That is, we could simply abort the problem away. Or euthanize the problem. Eliminate suffering by eliminating the one who suffers. An overdose of morphine, forced starvation and dehydration, a brick upside the head, the use of Zyklon-B -- problem solved.

If we recognize that the unfortunate sufferer needs assistance, here too, there are different alternatives.

We can simply say, "let someone else do it." That too is a popular response. "Let the government deal with them; after all, it's the government's job. Besides, government has 'experts.' And we'll simply take someone else's money -- the rich -- to pay for it." Or, a similar sentiment is to let some private charitable institution do it.

But are these really the only answers? Are these the best answers? No. They are not. Rather, the Church offers another answer to the question of how to respond to the unfortunate, the one who suffers, and the unwanted -- the "lepers" of our time. And that answer is the individual gift of self in faith, hope, and love. This is the answer that Father Damien, the leper priest, gave to the people of Molokai.

Faith in Government Programs and Institutions is Not Sufficient
Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate

11. In the course of history, it was often maintained that the creation of institutions was sufficient to guarantee the fulfillment of humanity's right to development. Unfortunately, too much confidence was placed in those institutions, as if they were able to deliver the desired objective automatically. In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation. . . .

34. Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. . . . The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. . . .

53. One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation. If we look closely at other kinds of poverty, including material forms, we see that they are born from isolation, from not being loved or from difficulties in being able to love. . . . All of humanity is alienated when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, ideologies and false utopias. Today humanity appears much more interactive than in the past: this shared sense of being close to one another must be transformed into true communion. The development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side. . . .

Personal Service with Love is Necessary
Pope Benedict, Deus Caritas Est

28. Love — caritas — will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. . . . The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. . . .

34. Practical [charitable] activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.

35. This proper way of serving others also leads to humility. The one who serves does not consider himself superior to the one served, however miserable his situation at the moment may be. Christ took the lowest place in the world—the Cross—and by this radical humility he redeemed us and constantly comes to our aid. Those who are in a position to help others will realize that in doing so they themselves receive help; being able to help others is no merit or achievement of their own. This duty is a grace. The more we do for others, the more we understand and can appropriate the words of Christ: “We are useless servants” (Lk 17:10). We recognize that we are not acting on the basis of any superiority or greater personal efficiency, but because the Lord has graciously enabled us to do so. There are times when the burden of need and our own limitations might tempt us to become discouraged. But precisely then we are helped by the knowledge that, in the end, we are only instruments in the Lord's hands; and this knowledge frees us from the presumption of thinking that we alone are personally responsible for building a better world. In all humility we will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord. It is God who governs the world, not we. We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength. To do all we can with what strength we have, however, is the task which keeps the good servant of Jesus Christ always at work: “The love of Christ urges us on” (2 Cor 5:14). . . .

39. Faith, hope and charity go together. . . . Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory. Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to practice it because we are created in the image of God.

Providing Hope in Suffering
Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi

26. It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love. This applies even in terms of this present world. When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of “redemption” which gives a new meaning to his life. . . .

27. Whoever is moved by love begins to perceive what “life” really is. . . . Life in its true sense is not something we have exclusively in or from ourselves: it is a relationship. And life in its totality is a relationship with him who is the source of life. If we are in relation with him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we “live.”

38. The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through “com-passion” is a cruel and inhuman society. Yet society cannot accept its suffering members and support them in their trials unless individuals are capable of doing so themselves; moreover, the individual cannot accept another's suffering unless he personally is able to find meaning in suffering, a path of purification and growth in maturity, a journey of hope. Indeed, to accept the “other” who suffers, means that I take up his suffering in such a way that it becomes mine also. Because it has now become a shared suffering, though, in which another person is present, this suffering is penetrated by the light of love. The Latin word con-solatio, “consolation”, expresses this beautifully. It suggests being with the other in his solitude, so that it ceases to be solitude. Furthermore, the capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reign supreme. Truth and justice must stand above my comfort and physical well-being, or else my life itself becomes a lie. In the end, even the “yes” to love is a source of suffering, because love always requires expropriations of my “I”, in which I allow myself to be pruned and wounded. Love simply cannot exist without this painful renunciation of myself, for otherwise it becomes pure selfishness and thereby ceases to be love.

39. To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves—these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself. Yet once again the question arises: are we capable of this? Is the other important enough to warrant my becoming, on his account, a person who suffers? Does truth matter to me enough to make suffering worthwhile? Is the promise of love so great that it justifies the gift of myself? In the history of humanity, it was the Christian faith that had the particular merit of bringing forth within man a new and deeper capacity for these kinds of suffering that are decisive for his humanity. The Christian faith has shown us that truth, justice and love are not simply ideals, but enormously weighty realities. It has shown us that God —Truth and Love in person—desired to suffer for us and with us. Bernard of Clairvaux coined the marvelous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis —God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way — in flesh and blood — as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus's Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God's compassionate love — and so the star of hope rises. Certainly, in our many different sufferings and trials we always need the lesser and greater hopes too—a kind visit, the healing of internal and external wounds, a favorable resolution of a crisis, and so on. In our lesser trials these kinds of hope may even be sufficient. But in truly great trials, where I must make a definitive decision to place the truth before my own welfare, career and possessions, I need the certitude of that true, great hope of which we have spoken here. For this too we need witnesses—martyrs—who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. Yet this capacity to suffer depends on the type and extent of the hope that we bear within us and build upon. The saints were able to make the great journey of human existence in the way that Christ had done before them, because they were brimming with great hope.

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A Visit to Kalaupapa, Molokai

Beloved as St. Damien is, pilgrimmages to Molokai are rare because it is still so inaccessible. But this video has some very interesting photographs of Kalaupapa.

St. Damien de Veuster --

Information about St. Damien de Veuster --

Diocese of Hawaii
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary
Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Ireland and England
Eternal Word Television Network
Kalaupapa National Historical Park

Damien: Making a Difference

Prayer to St. Damien of Molokai
Feast Day May 10

Saint Damien, you let yourself be guided by the Holy Spirit as a son obedient to the will of the Father.

By your life and your mission you manifest the tenderness and mercy of Christ, who reveals to us the beauty of the inner person that no sickness, no deformity, no weakness can completely disfigure.

By your work and your preaching you remind us that Jesus took upon Himself the poverty and suffering of every person, and by doing so He revealed its mysterious value.

Intercede with Christ, healer of bodies and souls, for our sick brothers and sisters, so that, in their anguish and pain, they may not feel abandoned but united to the risen Lord and His church.

May they see that the Holy Spirit has come to visit them and thus may they experience the consolation promised to the sorrowful. Amen.

Trailer for the award winning Documentary - Damien: Making a Difference
Official selection at the 2010 Honolulu Film Festival - Gold Kahuna Award and Award of Merit in Filmmaking from The Accolade Competition.
Documentary on the life of Fr. Damien de Veuster, canonized October 11, 2009, a priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, told through his own words, narration, and commentary.

Damien Today: A Saint for Our Times

Today, May 10, is the feast day of St. Damien. As stated in a letter from the General Superiors to the Brothers and Sisters of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary on the occasion of the canonization of Father Damien,

Damien is a universal brother, a model of humanity, apostle of those with leprosy, a hero of charity, an inspiration for anyone wanting to serve the excluded and forgotten, a source of pride for Belgians and Hawaiians, a glory for the whole Church. The power of Damien and his influence in peoples’ lives extend far beyond the limits of our Congregation. . . .

As in the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, in Damien we discover the face of God where people seem to have lost even a human face. The dedication of Damien to those with leprosy and his becoming a leper himself proclaim loudly the infinite dignity of each person and the love of God for his children. For that reason we praise God in his saints, who are reflections of his glory. We praise God in Saint Damien who is his son, the work of his hands, his gift to the Church and the world. . . .

Damien is not “ours”. He belongs to God. He can only really be understood as belonging to the Lord of life who shaped him and made him his own. Holiness is the work of the Lord. His love is what justifies us. From this perspective, the canonization becomes a confession of hope-filled faith. The love of God is at work among us, as it was active in the life of Damien. The love of God can continue to transform us in spite of our weakness and our shadow side. . . .

"The trouble with many saints is that their lives are presented as so holy, so astonishing, so out of the reach of ordinary mortals that our only response is to venerate them and to ask for their intercession. Similarly, the recounting and embellishment of so many miracle stories associated with their lives on earth, adds further distance between them and us. This cannot be said of Damien, whose only miracle on Molokai was the miracle of Gospel love. Someone once said that to save another person, you first have to love them. From an initial natural revulsion to diseased flesh, Damien grew to love his beloved lepers to an extraordinary degree, identifying so much with them that he became one of them. How could he have lived such heroic love for all those years? The answer lies in ways that are all available to us: prayer, scripture, Eucharist, sacraments, adoration and the awareness that what Damien did for his sisters and brothers he did for Christ. He once wrote that it was at the foot of the altar he received the strength to love those he ministered to. The First Letter of John asks us how can we love God who we cannot see and not love our sisters and brothers who we can see. Damien’s life and example proves that such love is possible, and reminds us of how to live such love."

--Narration in the film

For more information, go to this website of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Ireland and England.
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Max Lucado on Father Damien

Molokai: The Story of Father Damien

Movie Review of Molokai: The Story of Father Damien

by Steven D. Greydanus
Decent Films

Based on Hilde Eynikel’s biography of Blessed Fr. Damien de Veuster, Molokai: The Story of Father Damien tells the edifying, at times wrenching story of the 19th-century “Apostle to the Lepers,” who for fifteen years lived and finally died in a leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i.

A native of Belgium, ordained in Honolulu, at the age of 33 Fr. Damien volunteered to become the first and only priest serving the leper colony. There he spent himself attending as best he could to the people’s needs, both spiritual and physical, offering the sacraments but also dressing wounds, helping to shelter them from the elements, even constructing coffins and digging graves.

This inspiring, episodic biopic depicts Fr. Damien (David Wenham, Peter Jackson’s Faramir in The Lord of the Rings) as a man consumed by a singular sense of duty and obligation, lacking any thought but the spiritual and temporal good of those in his care and the good of his own soul. To church and state leaders in O’ahu he ceaselessly campaigns for more funds and medicine, nuns to help with the care of the sick, and for more frequent confession for himself.

In one of the film’s neatest exchanges, all three of Damien’s issues come together in a single stroke: Told that conditions on Moloka’i are too harsh to permit nuns, Damien protests that the settlement seems a veritable paradise whenever he asks for money — an argument that prompts a disapproving diocesan official to criticize Damien for lack of humility, to which Damien retorts that he will mention in his next confession!

Often compared to Mother Teresa, Damien differs from the nun of Calcutta in at least one important respect: He is openly and unapologetically evangelistic, zealously striving to bring those to whom he ministers to the Catholic faith and the sacraments. In this he is not always successful, and some of the film’s best scenes involve Peter O’Toole as a drily ironic, tenacious Anglican patient who resists Damien’s best efforts to offer him the sacraments. . . .

(read more here)
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Love for the Lepers

Mark 1:40-45 --

A leper came to Jesus and, kneeling down, begged him and said, "If you wish, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out His hand, touched him, and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean."
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning him sternly, Jesus dismissed him at once. Then He said to him, "See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them."
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

Leprosy
Catholic Encyclopedia

Leprosy proper, or lepra tuberculosa, in contradistinction to other skin diseases commonly designated by the Greek word lepra (psoriasis, etc.), is a chronic infectious disease caused by the bacillus leprœ, characterized by the formation of growths in the skin, mucous membranes, peripheral nerves, bones, and internal viscera, producing various deformities and mutilations of the human body. Today, Leprosy is also known as Hansen’s Disease, named after Gerhard Hansen, a Norwegian who identified the bacterium.

Leprosy was not uncommon in India as far back as the fifteenth century B.C. (Ctesias, Pers., xli; Herodian, I, i, 38), and in Japan during the tenth century B.C. Of its origin in these regions little is known, but Egypt has always been regarded as the place from where the disease was carried into the Western world. That it was well known in that country is evidenced by documents of the sixteenth century B.C. (Ebers Papyrus); ancient writers attribute the infection to the waters of the Nile (Lucretius, "De Nat. rer.", VI, 1112) and the unsanitary diet of the people (Galen). Various causes helped to spread the disease beyond Egypt.

The Church from a remote period has taken a most active part in promoting the wellbeing and care of the leper, both spiritual and temporal. The Order of St. Lazarus was the outcome of her practical sympathy for the poor sufferers during the long centuries when the pestilence was endemic in Europe.

Even in our own day we find the same Apostolic spirit alive. The saintly Father Damien, the martyr of Molokai, whose life-sacrifice for the betterment of the "lepers" of Hawaii, and his co-labourers and followers in that field of missionary work, have strikingly manifested in recent times the same apostolic spirit which actuated the followers of St. Lazarus in the twelfth and two succeeding centuries.

Worldwide, one to two million people are permanently disabled because of Hansen's disease. However, new understandings of the cause of the two forms of the disease may allow prevention, for example, by attention to minimising skin pressure points in endemic areas, avoiding sleeping on hard surfaces, general health measures to optimise immune function, etc. India has the greatest number of HD cases, with Brazil second and Myanmar third. There are still a few "leper colonies" around the world, in countries such as India and the Philippines. In 2001, government-run leper colonies in Japan came under judicial scrutiny, leading to the determination that the Japanese government had mistreated the patients.

Now, the term "leper" has come to be regarded as offensive, inasmuch as it dehumanizes the person, reducing him or her to the disease and an object of repulsion. But that is precisely the point in using it here. The world has historically cast out the "lepers." But Jesus Christ embraces these outcasts and takes, not only their medical hardships, but their persecutions, upon Himself.

Father Damien was able to exclaim with genuine joy, "we lepers," for he was one with them at Molokai, in love even before he was one with them after contracting the disease in the flesh.

The Canonization of Father Damien

This video is dated (it's from 2009), but informative nonetheless.

A Man of True Hope:Saint Damien - Apostle to Lepers

Father Damien was born on earth January 3, 1840, and born into heaven on April 15, 1889. He was a Belgian Catholic missionary of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and he is revered primarily by Hawaii residents and Christians for having dedicated his life in service to the lepers of Molokai in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Father Damien, born Joseph de Veuster, is the spiritual patron of people with leprosy, outcasts, and those with HIV/AIDS, and of the State of Hawaii.

In 1995, Pope John Paul II beatified him and bestowed the official title of Blessed Damien of Molokai. Today, October 11, 2009, he was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI. The Feast Day for Saint Damien is May 10, the day he arrived at Molokai.

Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium. His father, a small farmer, sent him to a college at Braine-le-Comte, to prepare for a commercial profession, but Joseph decided to enter the novitiate of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary at Louvain in 1860, taking the name of Damien. Three years later, though still in minor orders, he was sent to the mission of the Hawaiian Islands. He arrived on March 19, 1864, and was ordained as a priest in Honolulu two months later, on May 24. Father Damien was later given charge of various districts on the island of Hawaii, helping to build several chapels.

On the island of Molokai, there was a secluded settlement at Kalaupapa, where the government had banished all persons afflicted with leprosy. The Royal Board of Health provided them with a few supplies and food, but little else. Bishop Louis Maigret thought that these wretched people needed a priest to minister to their needs. Because he knew that it meant almost certain death, Bishop Maigret did not want to send anyone "in the name of obedience," so he asked for volunteers. Understanding that they would probably be sacrificing their lives, Damien and three others volunteered to go to Molokai. Damien was the first to go and, at his own request and that of the "lepers," he remained permanently on Molokai.

Father Damien arrived at the settlement on May 10, 1873, as its resident priest. There were then more than 600 inhabitants. He was presented by the bishop as "one who will be a father to you, and who loves you so much that he does not hesitate to become one of you; to live and die with you." A few months after he arrived, Damien wrote to his brother, "I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ."

While Hawaii has been described as a beautiful paradise, the leper colony at Kalaupapa on Molokai was a hell of despair. It has been called a morally deprived, lawless "colony of death" where people were forced to fight each other to survive.

For a long time, Father Damien was the only one to bring them the relief they so greatly needed. He was not only a priest to them, he took on the role of doctor and builder as well. He provided medical treatment, built homes, and dug graves. Working farms were organized, schools were erected, and for the first time, basic laws were enforced. But more than material relief, Father Damien brought hope.

He became a source of consolation and encouragement for the lepers, their pastor, the doctor of their souls and of their bodies, without any distinction of race or religion. He gave a voice to the voiceless, he built a community where the joy of being together and openness to the love of God gave people new reasons for living.

In 1885, after twelve years of service to the afflicted, Father Damien discovered symptoms of having contracted the disease himself when he lost sensation in one of his feet. However, he did not despair; rather, now he was able to identify completely with the people of Molokai. "We lepers," he said to them with love.

Because of his diligent efforts, others began to come to Molokai to give aid to the inhabitants. A Belgian priest, Louis Lambert Conrardy, came and took up pastoral duties. Blessed Mother Marianne Cope, Superior of the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, arrived with her sisters and organized a working hospital and homes for boys and girls. Like Damien, Blessed Marianne loved those suffering from leprosy more than she loved her very self. Joseph Dutton, an American Civil War soldier seeking a life of penance, arrived unannounced and took up many of the day-to-day activities of washing sores, dealing with ulcers, doing rudimentary surgery, building, and writing to presidents, princes and medical people for help. James Sinnett was a nurse from Chicago who attended the patients, including nursing Father Damien in the last phases of the disease.

Father Damien died in 1889 at the age of 49. He was originally buried on Molokai, but in 1936, at the request of the Belgian government, his body was moved to Belguim, and he is now buried in Leuven, a city close to the village where he was born. However, upon his beatification, Damien's right hand was returned to Molokai to a joyful reception.

Father Damien would be the first to say that his heroic service and witness was not due to his own personal strength. Rather, he got his strength from God, "It is at the foot of the altar that we find the strength we need in our isolation."
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An Uncommon Kindness: The Father Damien Story