Background
He came of peasant stock, and there was no influence to help him in his chosen career. Yet, when he died at the age of forty-nine on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, his name and accomplishments were world famous. From childhood, he was firmly convinced that he had a vocation for the priesthood. Guided by an older brother who was already a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, he decided to join the order and thus become a missionary. As was the custom of the order, he laid aside his baptismal name and adopted that of Damien, the fourth-century physician-martyr.
So eager was he for the missionary's life that he persuaded his superiors to allow him to depart for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) before he was ordained. From the beginning, manual labor played a great part in his pastoral life. With little financial aid, he built his own chapels, assuming the duties of lumberman, carpenter, builder, and architect. With an elementary stock of medicines, he was even physician to his flocks.
Leprosy had come to the Hawaiian Islands in 1853, quickly spreading to such an alarming extent that the government took measures to isolate the dread disease. A colony was established on the coast of the island of Molokai, and there the afflicted were deposited and left, for the most part, to their own resources. Little was then known about the disease, and exile to the colony was tantamount to a lingering death sentence. Damien received permission from his superiors to labor at Molokai; in May 1873 he landed at the notorious settlement where there was little or no law and all the inhabitants were diseased beyond hope. At first, he had no lodging and lived under the shelter of a tree. He performed the duties of grave-digger, nurse, and builder. When the lepers saw that he did not shrink from the horrors of their affliction, he gradually gained their confidence and began to improve their living conditions.
Eventually, Father Damien contracted leprosy himself, and almost gladly he announced that the disease had brought him closer to his parishioners. His labors attracted universal admiration, popular attention, and the support of doctors and hospitals. Distinguished visitors came to see Damien and his model colony.
Stricken by the disease and worn out by work Father Damien died on Apr. 15, 1889. His body was buried on Molokai, but his fellow countrymen petitioned to have his remains returned to his native soil. In 1936 his body was disinterred and brought back to Belgium. An attack on Father Damien's character and conduct called forth one of the most stirring justificatory epistles ever written, Robert Louis Stevenson's Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde (1890).