Thursday, October 11, 2012 - Litany Lane Blog:
Unction, Galatians 3:1-5, Luke 11:5-13, St Damien of Molokia, Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement and National Historical Park
Good Day Bloggers! Unction, Galatians 3:1-5, Luke 11:5-13, St Damien of Molokia, Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement and National Historical Park
Wishing everyone a Blessed Week!
P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Serenity Happens). It has a remarkable way of producing solace, peace, patience and tranquility and of course resolution...God's always available 24/7.
We are all human. We all experience birth, life and death. We all have
flaws but we also all have the gift knowledge and free will as well,
make the most of it. Life on earth is a stepping to our eternal home in
Heaven. Its your choice whether to rise towards eternal light or lost to
eternal darkness. Material items, though needed for sustenance and
survival on earth are of earthly value only. The only thing that passes
from this earth to Heaven is our Soul, our Spirit...it's God's perpetual
gift to us...Embrace it, treasure it, nurture it, protect it...
"Raise not a hand to another unless it is to offer in peace and goodwill." ~ Zarya Parx 2012
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Today's Word: unction unc·tion [uhngk-shuhn]
Origin: 1350–1400; Middle English unctioun < Latin ūnctiōn (stem of ūnctiō ) anointing, besmearing, equivalent to ūnct ( us ) (past participle of ung ( u ) ere to smear, anoint) + -iōn- -ion
noun
1. an act of anointing, especially as a medical treatment or religious rite.
2. an unguent or ointment; salve.
3. something soothing or comforting.
4. an excessive, affected, sometimes cloying earnestness or fervor in manner, especially in speaking.
5. Religion .
a. the oil used in religious rites, as in anointing the sick or dying.
b. the shedding of a divine or spiritual influence upon a person.
c. the influence shed.
d. extreme unction, Roman Catholic Church sacrament consisting of anointment with oil and the recitation of prayer, administered by a priest to a person who is very ill or dying.
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Today's Old Testament Reading - Galatians 3:1-5
1 You stupid people in Galatia! After you have had a clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified, right in front of your eyes, who has put a spell on you?
2 There is only one thing I should like you to tell me: How was it that you received the Spirit -- was it by the practice of the Law, or by believing in the message you heard?
3 Having begun in the Spirit, can you be so stupid as to end in the flesh?
4 Can all the favours you have received have had no effect at all -- if there really has been no effect?
5 Would you say, then, that he who so lavishly sends the Spirit to you, and causes the miracles among you, is doing this through your practice of the Law or because you believed the message you heard?
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Today's Gospel Reading - Luke 11:5-13
Jesus said to his disciples, 'Suppose
one of you has a friend and goes to him in the middle of the night to
say, "My friend, lend me three loaves, because a friend of mine on his
travels has just arrived at my house and I have nothing to offer him;"
and the man answers from inside the house, "Do not bother me. The door
is bolted now, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up to
give it to you." I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it to
him for friendship's sake, persistence will make him get up and give his
friend all he wants. 'So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to
you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to
you. For everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds;
everyone who knocks will have the door opened. What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, would hand him a snake? Or if he asked for an egg, hand him a scorpion? If
you then, evil as you are, know how to give your children what is good,
how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask him!'
Reflection
• The Gospel today continues to speak
about the theme of prayer, which began with the teaching of the Our
Father (Lk 11, 1-4). Today Jesus teaches that we should pray with faith
and insistence, without giving up. For this he uses a provocative
parable.
• Luke 11, 5-7: the parable that provokes. As always when Jesus has an important thing to teach, he has recourse to a comparison, to a parable. Today, he tells us a strange story which ends with a question, and he addresses the question to the people who listened to him and also to us who today read or listen to the story. "Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him in the middle of the night to say: My friend, lend me three loaves because a friend of mine on his travels has just arrived at my house and I have nothing to offer him; and the man answers from inside the house: ‘Do not bother me. The door is bolted now and my children are with me in bed: I cannot get up to give it to you". Before Jesus himself gives the answer, he wants our opinion. What would you answer: yes or no?
• Luke 11, 8: Jesus responds to the provocation. Jesus gives his response: "I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it to him for friendship's sake, persistence will make him get up and give his friend all he wants". If it were not Jesus, would you have had the courage to invent a story in which it is suggested that God expects our prayers to see himself free from blows. The response of Jesus strengthens the message on prayer, that is: God always expects our prayer. This parable reminds us of another one, also found in Luke's Gospel, the parable of the widow who insists to obtain her rights before the judge who respects neither God nor justice and who pays attention to the widow only because he wants to free himself from the insistence of the woman (Lk 18, 3-5). Then Jesus draws the conclusion to apply the message of the parable to life.
• Luke 11, 9-10: the first application of the Parable. "So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, everyone who searches finds, everyone who knocks will have the door opened". To ask, to search, to knock at the door. If you ask, you will receive. If you search, you will find, if you knock the door will be opened for you. Jesus does not say how much time the request should last, knock at the door, search, but the result is certain.
• Luke 11, 11-12: the second application of the parable. "What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, would hand him a snake? Or if he asked for an egg, hand him a scorpion?" This second application makes us see the type of public listening to the words of Jesus and also his way of teaching under the form of dialogue. He asks: "You who are a father, when your son asks you for a fish, would you give him a snake?" The people answer: "No!" "And if he asks you for an egg, would you give him a scorpion?" -"No!" Through dialogue, Jesus involves the people in the comparison and, from the responses he receives from them, the commitment with the message of the parable.
• Luke 11, 13: The message: to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. "If you then evil as you are , know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!". The greatest gift that God has for us is the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we were created, he breathed his spirit into our nose and we became living beings (Gen 2, 7). In the second creation through Faith in Jesus, he gives us the Holy Spirit again, the same Spirit who made the Word become incarnate in Mary (Lk 1, 35). With the help of the Holy Spirit, the process of the Incarnation of the Word continues up to the hour of his death on the Cross. At the end, at the hour of death, Jesus commits the spirit to the Father: "Into your hands I commit my Spirit" (Lk 23, 46). Jesus promises us this Spirit as the source of truth and of understanding (Jn 14, 14-17; 16, 13), and a help in the persecutions (Mt 10, 20; Ac 4, 31). This Spirit cannot be bought with money at the Supermarket. The only way of obtaining it is through prayer. After nine days of prayer the abundant gift of the Spirit is obtained on the day of Pentecost (Ac 1, 14; 2, 1-4).
Personal questions
• How do I respond to the provocation
of the parable? A person who lives in a small apartment in a large city,
how will she answer? Would she open the door?
• When you pray, do you pray convinced that you will obtain what you ask for?
• When you pray, do you pray convinced that you will obtain what you ask for?
Reference: Courtesy of Order of Carmelites, www.ocarm.org.
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Featured Item of the Day from Litany Lane
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Saint of the Day: St. Damien of Molokai
Feast Day: October 11
Patron Saint: Apostle of Lepers, Molokai, Hawaii
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| Saint Damien of Molokai |
After sixteen years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, he eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is considered a "martyr of charity". He was the tenth person recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church to have lived, worked, and/or died in what is now the United States.
In both the Latin Rite and the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, Damien is venerated as a saint, one who is holy and worthy of public veneration and invocation. In the Anglican communion, as well as other denominations of Christianity, Damien is considered the spiritual patron for leprosy and outcasts. As the patron saint of the Diocese of Honolulu and of Hawaiʻi, Father Damien Day is celebrated statewide on April 15. Upon his beatification by Pope John Paul II in Rome on June 4, 1995, Blessed Damien was granted a memorial feast day, which is celebrated on May 10. Father Damien was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday October 11, 2009. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls him "the Apostle of the Lepers", and elsewhere he is known as the "leper priest".
Early life
Damien was born Jozef ("Jef") De Veuster, the seventh child and fourth son of the Flemish corn merchant Joannes Franciscus ("Frans") De Veuster and his wife Anne-Catherine ("Cato") Wouters in the village of Tremelo in Flemish Brabant. He attended college at Braine-le-Comte, then entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Leuven, taking the name of Brother Damianus (Damiaan in Dutch, Damien in French) in his first vows, presumably in reference to the first Saint Damian.Following in the footsteps of his sisters Eugénie and Pauline (who became nuns) and brother Auguste (Father Pamphile), Damien became a Picpus Brother on October 7, 1860. His superiors thought that he was not a good candidate for the priesthood because he lacked education. However, he was not considered unintelligent. Because he learned Latin well from his brother, his superiors decided to allow him to become a priest. During his ecclesiastical studies, he would pray every day before a picture of St. Francis Xavier, patron of missionaries, to be sent on a mission. Three years later his prayer was answered when, because of illness, Auguste could not travel to Hawaii as a missionary, and Damien was allowed to take his place.
Mission to Hawaii
Father Damien in 1873 before he set off for Molokaʻi
While Father Damien was serving in several parishes on Oahu, the Kingdom of Hawaii was facing a public health crisis. Some Native Hawaiians became infected by several diseases brought to the Hawaiian Islands by foreign traders and sailors. Thousands of Hawaiians died of influenza, syphilis, and other ailments that had never been seen there before. One of these other diseases was leprosy (Hansen's disease). At that time, leprosy was thought to be highly contagious, but later it was found that 95 percent of human beings are immune to it. Leprosy was also thought to be incurable. Out of fear of its spread in 1865, the Hawaiian Legislature passed and King Kamehameha V approved the "Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy". This law quarantined the lepers of Hawaii and caused them to be moved to settlement colonies of Kalaupapa and Kalawao on the eastern end of the Kalaupapa peninsula on the island of Molokai. Kalawao County, where the villages are located is divided from the rest of Molokai by a steep mountain ridge, and even now the only land access to it is by a mule trail. About 8,000 Hawaiians were sent to the Kalaupapa peninsula from 1866 through 1969.
In the beginning, the Royal Board of Health provided the quarantined people with food and other supplies, but it did not have the resources to offer proper health care for them. According to documents of that time, the Kingdom of Hawaii did not plan the settlements to be penal colonies, but the kingdom did not provide enough resources to support them. The kingdom planned for the inhabitants to grow their own crops, but because of the local environment and the effects of leprosy, this was impractical. By 1868, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), "Drunken and lewd conduct prevailed. The easy-going, good-natured people seemed wholly changed."
Father Damien, seen here with the Kalawao Girls Choir during the 1870s.
...I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.Father Damien's arrival is seen by some as a turning point for the community. Under his leadership, basic laws were enforced, shacks became painted houses, working farms were organized, and schools were established. At his own request, and of the lepers, Father Damien remained on Molokai.
Illness and death
Father Damien on his deathbed
Mother Marianne Cope standing beside Father Damien's funeral bier
Masanao Goto, a Japanese leprologist, came to Honolulu in 1885 and treated Father Damien. It was his theory that leprosy was caused by a diminution of the blood, and his treatment consisted of nourishing food, moderate exercise, frequent friction to the benumbed parts, special ointments and medical baths. The treatments did, indeed, relieve some of the symptoms and were very popular with the Hawaiian patients. Father Damien had faith in the treatments and stated that he wished to be treated by no one but Dr. Masanao Goto.
Dr. Goto was one of his best friends and Damien's last trip to Honolulu on July 10, 1886, was made to receive treatment from him.
In his last years Damien engaged in a flurry of activity. While continuing his charitable ministrations, he hastened to complete his many building projects, enlarge his orphanages, and organize his work. Help came from four strangers who came to Kalaupapa to help the ailing missionary: a priest, a soldier, a male nurse, and a nun.
Louis Lambert Conrardy was a Belgian priest. Mother Marianne Cope had been the head of the Franciscan-run St Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse, New York. Joseph Dutton was an American Civil War soldier who left behind a marriage that had been broken by alcoholism. James Sinnett was a nurse from Chicago. Conrardy took up pastoral duties; Cope organized a working hospital; Dutton attended to the construction and maintenance of the community's buildings; Sinnett nursed Damien in the last phases of the disease. An arm in a sling, a foot in bandages and his leg dragging, Damien knew death was near. He was bedridden on March 23, 1889, and on March 30 he made a general confession and renewed his vows. On April 1, he received Holy Viaticum and on April 2, Extreme Unction.
Father Damien died of leprosy at 8:00 am on April 15, 1889, aged 49. The next day, after Mass by Father Moellers at St. Philomena's, the whole settlement followed the funeral cortège to the cemetery where Damien was laid to rest under the same Pandanus tree where he first slept upon his arrival on Molokaʻi.
In January 1936, at the request of the Belgian government, Damien's body was returned to his native land. It was brought back aboard the Belgian sailing ship Mercator and now rests in Leuven, an historic university city close to the village where Damien was born. After his beatification in June 1995, the remains of his right hand were returned to Hawaiʻi, and re-interred in his original grave on Molokaʻi.
Order of Kalākaua
King David Kalākaua bestowed on Damien the honor Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Kalākaua. When Princess Lydia Liliʻuokalani visited the settlement to present the medal, she was reported as having been too distraught and heartbroken to read her speech. The princess shared her experience with the world and publicly acclaimed Damien's efforts. Consequently, Damien's name was spread across the United States and Europe. American Protestants raised large sums of money for the missionary. The Church of England sent food, medicine, clothing and supplies. It is believed that Damien never wore the medal given to him, although it was placed by his side at his funeral.Criticism and commentary
C. M. Hyde; rebuttal by Robert Louis Stevenson
Upon his death, a global discussion arose as to the mysteries of Damien's life and his work on the island of Molokaʻi. Much criticism came out of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Hawaiʻi. It is possible that these church leaders took a stance against Damien largely because of their bias against Catholicism. The most well-known treatise against Damien was by a Honolulu Presbyterian, Reverend Charles McEwen Hyde, in a letter dated August 2, 1889 to a fellow pastor, Reverend H. B. Gage; in it, Hyde referred to Father Damien as "a coarse, dirty man" whose leprosy should be attributed to his "carelessness".In 1889 Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and his family arrived in Hawaiʻi for an extended stay. While there Stevenson, also a Presbyterian, drafted a famous open letter as a rebuttal in defense of Damien. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges that in this treatise "the memory of the Apostle of the Lepers is brilliantly vindicated". Prior to writing his letter, dated February 25, 1890, Stevenson stayed on Molokaʻi for eight days and seven nights, during which he kept a diary. In the letter Stevenson answered Hyde's criticisms point by point. He sought testimony from critical Protestants who knew the man, which he recorded in his diary. The treatise included some extracts, like the following which upbraided Rev. Hyde for his fault finding:
But, sir, when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour – the battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing remained to you in your defeat – some rags of common honour; and these you have made haste to cast away.In writing to Hyde, Stevenson proved prescient:
If that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named a Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage.Stevenson further chided Hyde for nit-picking Damien and failing to acknowledge his heroic virtue:
You are one of those who have an eye for faults and failures; that you take a pleasure to find and publish them; and that, having found them, you make haste to forget the overvailing virtues and the real success which had alone introduced them to your knowledge. It is a dangerous frame of mind.Stevenson then comments on his own journal entries:
...I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, without correction; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness. They are almost a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these that I was seeking: with his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and the world were already sufficiently acquainted. I was besides a little suspicious of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense, but merely because Damien's admirers and disciples were the least likely to be critical. I know you will be more suspicious still; and the facts set down above were one and all collected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed the father in his life. Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up the image of a man, with all his weakness, essentially heroic, and alive with rugged honesty, generosity, and mirth.The Catholic Encyclopedia further states that a correspondence in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, June 20, 1905, "completely removes from the character of Father Damien every vestige of suspicion, proving beyond a doubt that Dr. Hyde's insinuations rested merely on misunderstandings".
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi offered his own defense of Father Damien's life and work. Gandhi claimed Damien to have been an inspiration for his social campaigns in India that led to the freedom of his people and secured aid for those that needed it. Gandhi was quoted in T.N. Jagadisan's 1965 publication, Mahatma Gandhi Answers the Challenge of Leprosy, as saying,The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, counts by the thousands those who after the example of Fr. Damien have devoted themselves to the victims of leprosy. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism.
Canonization
Original grave of Father Damien next to the St. Philomena Roman Catholic Church in Kalawao, Kalaupapa Peninsula, Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi (21°10′37″N 156°56′53.3″W / 21.17694°N 156.948139°W)
The grave of Saint Damien in the crypt of the church of the Congregation of Sacred Hearts (Leuven, 50°52′33.4″N 004°41′54.1″E / 50.875944°N 4.698361°E)
Two miracles have been attributed to Father Damien's posthumous intercession: On June 13, 1992, Pope John Paul II approved the cure of a nun in France in 1895 as a miracle attributed to Venerable Damien's intercession. In that case, Sister Simplicia Hue began a novena to Father Damien as she lay dying of a lingering intestinal illness. It is stated that pain and symptoms of the illness disappeared overnight.
In the second case, Audrey Toguchi, a Hawaiian woman who suffered from cancer, was completely cured after having prayed at the grave of Father Damien on Molokaʻi: In 1997, Toguchi was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a cancer that arises in fat cells. She underwent surgery a year later. A tumor the size of a fist was removed from the side of her left thigh and buttock. Unfortunately, the cancer spread to her lungs. Her physician, Dr. Walter Chang, told her, 'Nobody has ever survived this cancer. It's going to take you.' The Toguchi case was documented in the Hawaiʻi Medical Journal of October 2000.
In April 2008, the Holy See accepted the two cures as evidence of Father Damien's sanctity. On June 2, 2008, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican voted to recommend raising Father Damien of Molokaʻi to sainthood. The decree that officially notes and verifies the miracle needed for canonization was promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal José Saraiva Martins on Thursday, July 3, 2008, with the ceremony taking place in Rome, with celebrations in Belgium and Hawaiʻi. On February 21, 2009, the Vatican announced that Father Damien would be canonized. The ceremony took place in Rome on Rosary Sunday, October 11, 2009, in the presence of King Albert II of the Belgians and Queen Paola as well as the Belgian Prime Minister, Herman Van Rompuy, and several cabinet ministers, completing the process of canonization. In Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama affirmed his deep admiration for St. Damien, saying that he gave voice to voiceless and dignity to the sick. Four other individuals were canonized with Father Damien at the same ceremony: Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński, Sister Jeanne Jugan, Father Francisco Coll Guitart and Rafael Arnáiz Barón.
Damien is honored, together with Marianne Cope, with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on April 15.
In Arts and Media
This reredos in Episcopal St. Thomas the Apostle Hollywood shows cross-denominational veneration.
Screenwriter and film director John Farrow wrote a biography of him called Damien the Leper which was published in 1937.
Director David Miller made a short film of Father Damien's life in 1938 entitled The Great Heart, released by MGM.
The first full-length film on Father Damien was Molokai (1959), a Spanish production directed by Luis Lucia with Javier Escrivá, Roberto Camardiel and Gerard Tichy playing the main roles.
The one-man play Damien tells the story of Damien's life in the first person through a series of flashbacks.
Father Damien was portrayed in 1980 by Ken Howard in the television film Father Damien: Leper Priest.
Belgian film producer Tharsi Vanhuysse produced and Paul Cox directed the 1999 film Molokai: The Story of Father Damien.
Legacy
Statue outside the Hawaiʻi State Capitol Building
In both ecumenical religious and nonsectarian communities, Damien's ministry to lepers is being cited as an example of how society should minister to HIV/AIDS patients. On the occasion of Damien's canonization, President Barack Obama stated, "In our own time, as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Father Damien’s resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick." Several clinics and centers nationwide catering to HIV/AIDS patients bear his name. There is a chapel named after him, and dedicated to people with HIV/AIDS, in St. Thomas the Apostle Hollywood, an Episcopal parish.
The Blessed Damien Society, and other charities fighting leprosy, have been set up in his name. A centre for "peace for families and individuals affected by bereavement, stress, violence, and other difficulties with particular attention to Northern Ireland".
Damien is considered an important person in the history of Hawaiʻi. The Father Damien Statue on the steps of the Hawaiʻi State Capitol Building honors him, and a replica is displayed in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol.
Schools are named after him, including Damien High School in Southern California, and Damien Memorial School in Hawaiʻi. The village of Saint-Damien, Quebec is also named after him. Churches worldwide are also named after him.
St. Damien of Molokaʻi Catholic Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, is believed to have been the first Roman Catholic church in the continental United States to be named for Saint Damien when it was dedicated in 2010. A Traditional Latin Mass church, it is operated by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), and was authorized by Eusebius J. Beltran, Archbishop of Oklahoma City, in 2010.
References
- Daws, Gavan (1984). Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-0920-3.
- Eynikel, Hilde (1999). Molokai: the Story of Father Damien. Staten Island: Alba House. ISBN 0-8189-0872-6.
- Stewart, Richard (2000). Leper Priest of Moloka'i. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-2322-2.
- Dutton, Joseph (1913). "Molokai". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Farrow, John. Damen the Leper. (first edition 1937; latest edition 1998) ISBN 978-0-385-48911-9
- Bunson, Margaret; Bunson, Matthew (2009). Apostle of the Exiled: St. Damien of Molokai. Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.. ISBN 978-1-59276-610-9.
- Edmond, Rod (2006). Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History. Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories. 8. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-86584-0.
- Gould, Tony (2005). A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World. Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-30502-8.
- Michaels, Barry (2009). Saint Damien de Veuster: Missionary of Moloka'i. Boston: Pauline Books & Media. ISBN 0-8198-7128-1. http://store.pauline.org/English/Books/tabid/126/ProductID/3218
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Today Snippet: Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement and National Historical Park
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| Molokai, Kalaupapa National Historic Park |
Establishment of leper colony
The removal of the Native Hawaiian inhabitants in 1865 cut the cultural ties and associations that preceding generations had established with the ʻaina (land) over 900 years. Thereafter, the establishment of isolation settlements, first at Kalawao and then at Kalaupapa, led to broader dislocations across Hawaiian society as the Kingdom, and subsequently, the Territory of Hawaiʻi tried to control leprosy (also known as Hansen's disease), a much feared illness, by forcibly relocating patients to the isolated peninsula. The impact of both the broken connections with the ʻaina and of family members "lost" to Kalaupapa are still felt in Hawaiʻi today. Hansen's disease, caused by a bacteria-based infection, has been cured since the 1940s with the introduction of modern antibiotics. There are no active cases of Hansen's disease in the Kalaupapa settlement or on the Island of Molokaʻi, and those who reside in the colony presently are the few remaining elderly former disease patients and their descendant families who wish to continue to live in the neighborhood of housing maintained on the peninsula.The Leper Colony in popular culture
The Belgian missionary-priest Father Damien brought considerable attention to the leper colony both in the late 19th century but also in subsequent literature and popular culture. (He would be canonized in 2009 as a Catholic saint.) Robert Louis Stevenson described the Molokaʻi leper colony as a "prison fortified by nature". Jack London visited in 1908 and wrote the Lepers of Molokai and Koolau the Leper in response. The 1999 movie Molokai featuring Peter O'Toole and Kris Kristofferson focuses on the story of Father Damien and the leper colony. Long after the death of Father Damien, Belgian missionary priests from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary continued to devote their lives to work on Molokai and assist its ex-leper flock, most recent figures including Henri Systermans and Fr. Joseph Hendricks whose death in November 2008 marked the end of this 140 year old tradition.St. Philomena Catholic Church in Kalawao
Park description
Kalaupapa National Historical Park, established in 1980, preserves the physical settings for these stories. Within its boundaries are the historic Hansen's disease settlements of Kalawao and Kalaupapa. The community of Kalaupapa, on the leeward side of Kalaupapa Peninsula, is still home for a few elderly surviving former Hansen's disease-scarred patients, whose memories and experiences of their ordeals with surviving the disease are cherished. In Kalawao on the windward side of the peninsula are the churches of Siloama, established in 1866, and Saint Philomena, associated with the work of St. Father Damien.References
- "Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved 2008-07-04.
- Apple, Russell A. (September 5, 1975). "Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement" (pdf). National Register of Historic Places - Inventory Nomination Form. National Park Service. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
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