St. Damien of Molokai

St. Damien of Molokai was born Jozef De Veuster on 3 January 1840 at Tremelo, Belgium, and joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, taking the name Damien. Sent to the Hawaiian Islands, he was ordained in Honolulu in 1864. In 1873 he volunteered for the isolated leper settlement at Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, where those afflicted with Hansen's disease had been forcibly quarantined and left largely without care.

For sixteen years Damien gave himself entirely to the outcasts of Molokai, building homes, chapels, and coffins, dressing wounds, celebrating the sacraments, and restoring dignity to a community that had been abandoned. He famously began one sermon "we lepers" after contracting the disease himself around 1885. He died at Kalaupapa on 15 April 1889. Canonized in 2009, St. Damien is honored as the apostle of the lepers and a patron of those with leprosy and of outcasts, a supreme example of charity that fears no cost.