Ministry for THAT disease

As a rule, priests do not mind ministering to the sick - it is a key part of their vocation.

But many priests were afraid of that disease and some priests actually refused to minister to people who had it.

People might talk.

And what if the priests turned out to have the same disease?

A young priest from overseas volunteered to minister to a group of people with that disease. In fact, he made it his fulltime ministry.

For more than ten years, he served those whom other people – even other priests – shunned.

And then he got the disease.

Within five years he was dead.

He died during Holy Week, still among the people he had come to serve at the leper colony on the island of Molokai, Hawaii, 108 years ago last month.

Father Damien de Veuster would be declared one of the Blessed by the great Pope John Paul II in 1995 and his memory is celebrated on this day – the anniversary of his arrival on Molokai.

(Last month, it was announced that the Theological Consultors of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints decided that a second miracle could be attributed to the intercession of Blessed Damien, which opens the door to his being declared a Saint.)