Moloki is an island of beauty with its 2,000 ft. cliffs emerging from the sea and is also the Island of Sorrow for the many lepers that were sent there to die in the 19th Century. Contact with Europeans and Asians had brought leprosy to the Hawaiian islands which became a contagious epidemic forcing the government beginning is 1866 to isolate them to the Kalaupapa peninsula on the island of Molokai.

Fr. Damien, a priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart volunteered to care for the souls of the poor lepers. He arrived at Kalawao in 1873 with his breviary and little else. At first he did not have the courage to live in one of the lepers makeshift dwelling, so for the first three weeks he lived in the open taking shelter under a pandanus tree.

"Here at Kalawao, the priest had opened a door to hell. Victims of the disease were all about him, their bodies in ruins, their faces ravaged and smashed by the coracious bacillus of leprosy. The constant coughing of the sick was the colony's most familiar sound." The smell was so bad in their dwellings that while visiting them he had to go out for a breath of fresh air; he began to smoke a pipe in order to overcome the fowl smell. Thus, somewhere during the first part of his stay he made the dread decision to set aside his fear of contagion. He touched his lepers, he embraced them, he dined with them, he cleaned and bandaged their wounds and sores. He placed the host upon their battered mouths. He put his thumb on their forehead when he anointed them with the holy oil. All these actions involved touch. Touch is, of course, necessary if one is to communicate love and concern. The Hawaiians instinctively knew this. And that is why the Hawaiians shrank from the Yankee divines. Although these Yankee religious leaders expended much money on their mission endeavors, few Hawaiians joined their churches. The islanders sensed the contempt in which the puritan minds held them." (Webpage: Damien the Leper)

His healing touch of God's love for them brought many closer to God and he made many converts at the price of his own life. He was a strong man who did much work, such a building houses to improve their lot. He always addressed the people as "we lepers" which eventually became a reality in his own life. In 1884 he noticed that placing his feet in hot water, there was no sensation. When he informed his superior that he had leprosy, he was forbidden to visit the missionary center of the Sacred Heart in Honolulu. If he came, they told him, he should go to the leper hospital of the Franciscan Sisters but not to say Mass because no one would concelebrate and the sisters would refuse to receive communion from his hands. "The rejection by his religious superiors left him in near disarray. Once he claimed: "From the rest of the world I received gold and frankincense, but from my own superiors myrrh" (a bitter herb). The cemetery was part of the Church and rectory complex. He had buried 2000 lepers here and he knew that his time was close at hand. As leprosy progressed, it also invaded his internal organs; leprosy had invaded his throat, lungs, stomach and intestines. He voice was reduced to a raucous whisper and slept only two hours a night. (Webpage: Damien the Leper)

In his bed of pain Psalm 41 may have often come upon his lips:

"Happy the man who considers the poor and the weak.
The LORD will save him in the day of evil,
will guard him, give him life, make him happy on the land
and will not give him up to the will of his foes,

The LORD will help him on his bed of pain,
he will bring him back from sickness to health.

As for me I said: "Lord, have mercy on me,
heal my soul for I have sinned against you."

My foes are speaking evil against me."How long before he dies and his name be forgotten?"

He died on April 15, 1889 and was buried in his Cemetery under that same pandanus tree which had given him shelter in upon his arrival in 1873.

9. Prayer Healing Touch