Leper-Treating Priest to be Sainted

Father Damien ~ the Belgian priest who ministered to lepers in Hawaii until he succumbed to the disease himself in 1889 ~ will be canonized as a saint in October.

Born Joseph de Veuster in 1840, he took the name Damien and went to Hawaii in 1864 to join other missionaries and minister to leprosy patients on Molokai island, where some 8,000 people had been banished amid an epidemic in Hawaii in the 1850s.

He eventually contracted the disease ~ also known as Hansen's disease ~ and died in 1889 at age 49. "He went there knowing that he could never return," The Rev. Alfred Bell, who spearheaded Damien's canonization cause, told Vatican Radio. "He suffered a lot, but he stayed."

Miracles Ascribed to Father Damien

Father Damien was beatified ~ a step toward sainthood ~ in 1995 by Pope John Paul II after the Vatican declared that the 1987 recovery of a nun of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary was a miracle. The nun recovered after praying to Damien.

After beatification, a second miracle is needed for sainthood.

In July, Pope Benedict XVI declared that a Honolulu woman's recovery in 1999 from terminal lung cancer was the miracle needed for the priest to be made a saint. She too had prayed to Father Damien.

Click here for the Associated Press article.
Photo shows Father Damien two months before his death of leprosy.