He was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840. He entered the congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and of the perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar in 1859. Not yet being ordained Priest, he offered himself to go abroad to the Hawaiian missions, where he arrived in 1863.
Newly in the priesthood, he exercised the holy ministry at first in the Hawaiian Island; then he offered himself again to go and live among the lepers in the banned island of Molokai. There, during sixteen years, he partook their life, their labors, their sufferings, their joys, as well as their terrible decease and a similar death. He died as leper in 1889.
"In the Magnificat we hear many voices of the saints of charity, I am thinking in particular those who spend their life among the sick and suffering, such as Camille de Lellis and John of God, Damien De Veuster and Benedetto Menni . Those who live for a long time with the suffering people, know the anguish and the tears, but also the miracle of joy, the fruit of love. "
Benedict XVI, February 11, 2010
“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.”
Mahatma Gandhi, 1945
05/10/2025