Major funding for this program was provided by a grant from the Hawaii Committee for the Humanities.

Additional funding provided by grants from Bank of Hawaii Foodland Supermarket Limited and Meadow Gold Dairies.

This is the time of day I always hear them.

Dusk when the sun's gone down.

But it's still light enough to recognize a face.

Lepers.

40 or 50 of them at a time.

Marched between armed guards.

From Kalihi-Kai to King, from King to Bishop, and on down Bishop to the pier, where small boats wait to ferry them to that larger boat anchored further out.

The leper boat.

It always leaves at dusk on Mondays, and travels through the dark to dump its human cargo before the sun comes up.

This is the time of day.

I hear their muffled steps, the mourning sounds of those who follow after the haunting farewell chants, the anguished cries of separation.

And then the shrill whistle as the boat moves off across the water.

My feet have always been a problem.

Ever since I came to the islands, that is.

Or not, when I was a boy in Belgium, nor I was as good on my feet as anybody in those days, running around the country side, helping out on the farm, driving the cows in at night, skating on the River Dyle Why, the night before I left home for good.

I walked 14 miles to say goodbye to my mother at the shrine of Our Lady.

12 years.

I promised her.

I didn't keep my promise.

Actually, the trouble with my feet started at my first mission field on the Big Island, where I used to walk for miles over still warm lava flows in search of my stray sheep in those ill fitting boots.

They'd itch and burn and ache my feet.

I mean, I couldn't sleep at night unless I soaked them well.

After that I had trouble with them till the day I died.

The day I died.

Monday of Holy Week, 1889.

Palm Sunday night around 11:45.

Brother James lights the lantern, wakes up father Conrady, the priest who has been sent to replace me here at the leper settlement, and together they go next door into the church.

Soon I hear them coming back.

Brother James ringing the little altar bell as he walks ahead of Father Conrady in the dark.

They come to my room.

Brother James holds the napkin beneath my chin.

Father Conrady says in a sleepy voice, the body and blood of Christ.

And I received my last communion.

Then Father Conrady asks if he can have this old cassock, threadbare, full of leprosy.

What would he do with it?

Better I be buried in it.

Next thing I know, it's getting light.

The roosters are crowing and it’s hard to breathe.

So Brother James helps me to sit up.

And as he's holding me, I breathe for the last time.

As he bends over to close my eyes.

A farewell chant begins outside my door and quickly spreads throughout the settlement.

Till every leper knows that Kamiano’s spirit is gone.

Brother James fetches a basin, washes my body, dresses it in the old cassock and carries it to the church next door.

And there he puts it in a plain redwood box.

And the rest of the day I lie in state.

All the lepers file in to say goodbye.

The choir sings my favorite hymns.

This time I have no little jokes to raise their spirits.

No ointment for their sores.

By mid-afternoon my sores have crusted over with black scabs.

Well the sickness has consumed me.

It has nothing left to feed upon.

And then at last, towards evening, Father Conrady helps Brother James to dress me in my vestments.

They light the candles and tiptoe out.

I'm alone.

It's quiet, peaceful, except for the pounding of the surf and the everlasting whine of Mr.

Clifford's barrel organ.

You know that kind man.

He brought it all the way from London, hoping it would amuse us.

It has beyond all expectation.

The children wind it up and let it go, and are eternally surprised when it makes music of itself.

After a while it stops.

And there is nothing but the surf.

The requiem Mass the next morning with Father Conrady at the altar is much the same as I have celebrated for other lepers, about 3000 of them comforting the mourners, interceding for the dead, the choir pleading eternal rest.

Give unto them, oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May they rest in peace.

At length eight lepers lift the coffin to their shoulders, and blind Peteros.

fife and drum corps lead the procession to the cemetery.

You know, sorrow at a lepers passing is tempered with gratitude for his release.

So Petero’s music is anything but sad, actually.

More like picnic music.

As we make our way to the open grave beneath a hala tree, where I spent my first nights at the settlement.

Young boys from the orphanage, Damien's Chinatown, they called it, are standing four deep around the open grave.

And one suddenly breaks ranks and climbes up into the tree.

And then the first shovelful of dirt.

For 16 years I was sole keeper of this city of the dead.

You see the church, the rectory, and the cemetery form one enclosure.

And it was my habit to come here after dark, to say my beads.

Now I've come to rest.

And so I do, for almost.

Half a century.

And then, one February day the black marble stone is rolled away the ground dug up, the coffin lifted to the surface.

Strange hands tear away the rotting lid.

Lepers I have never known.

Break spontaneously into chants and funeral songs for their dead heroes.

And the voice cries.

The body is intact, praise God!

Well.

And so it is.

I mean, my hair is a little longer and my beard, you know, my skin is a deeper bronze.

perhaps the silver rosary is tarnished, the vestments moldy, and the gold embroidery dull.

But there are no signs of leprosy.

I mean, except for my poor feet from which a toe or two is missing.

The body is intact.

Now, it had been my wish and my intention to stay here forever with my lepers.

Together we would await the resurrection.

But apparently my wish has been forgotten.

My body, still in the decaying coffin, is being put into a packing box, and a priest is explaining, that father Damien is leaving Kalawao.

An airplane is waiting down by the landing.

Well, why doesn't somebody speak up for me?

Insist that I be allowed to stay?

15 minutes to fly the channel.

In my day it took all night by boat.

And whether you were a passenger on deck or a leper in the hold, seasickness was part of it.

The plane touches down in Honolulu.

The packing box, now draped with the Belgian flag, is transferred to an army caisson, and the military procession makes its way to its destination, the Fort Street Cathedral.

Four days I lie in state now in a koa casket.

You know, the kind usually reserved for Hawaiian royalty.

This is my cathedral.

Its confessionals know my sins, its pews, my penances.

I was ordained in this cathedral.

Here I took my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

I lay under a funeral pall right here in this sanctuary, dying to the world to live in Christ.

These hands that as a farm boy had milked cows, carried horses, taken newborn calves, pitched hay, shoveled manure.

These hands were consecrated here.

Bishop Maigret took me a farm boy with only four years religious instruction.

And you know, the minimum for a priest is usually ten.

He took me, and he made a priest of me.

“If they won't send me priest,” he said, “I'll have to make my own.” And when I turned from this altar and I saw them waiting at the railings, Hawaiians, who only yesterday were still worshiping their ancient gods, Kane, Ku and Lono, when I saw them waiting to receive the body and blood of Christ from my hands.

My fingers trembled, my heart melted like wax.

And I knew happiness beyond belief.

From that moment I was their servant and their priest.

I attended my first island Mass in this cathedral.

We missionaries came straight here from the boat to give thanksgiving for our safe arrival.

Be dazzled by the sunshine, the flowers, the friendly people chattering at English and Hawaiian and neither of which I then spoke or understood.

And a grand cathedral like this, where we'd imagine none at all.

Here in the bishop's office I had my first interview with His Excellency.

I approached him in fear and trembling because of something that had happened at the boat.

Is he?

We'd been five months at sea.

And here we were going down the gangplank in Honolulu.

Ten sisters, all in white.

Six brothers, all in black.

Our feet touch the ground, but we can't get our land, legs.

And the sight of our 16 religious staggering like drunken penguins towards our venerable bishop was just too much.

I held with laughter.

Well, the boat day crowds roared back.

They pressed up against the ropes and they threw flower garlands around my neck.

And the bishop, as I came close, was very careful not to let his eye meet mine, but later in his office he laughed.

“Nobody through flower garlands around my neck,” he said.

“They just deported me.” “But I came back aboard French warship which threatened to shell the city unless freedom of religious worship was guaranteed and I was allowed to stay.

That was 30 years ago.

It's still enemy territory, you might say, but that laugh of yours, my boy helped more than you can realize.” Before the oil of ordination was dry.

He shipped me off in a few months to Puna, on the Big Island where they hadn't seen a priest in years, and then eight years at Kohala, a parish so large it took two weeks to cover it on the back of my mule, Kapakahi, or on foot.

No wonder they started to have trouble with my feet.

There were other interviews with His Excellency, usually with me begging for money to build chapels and His Excellency grumbling at the cost.

Yes, Your Excellency, I did send the Mother Superior 200 pounds of potatoes.

Well, of course I sent a bill.

No, she didn't exactly order them.

But everybody needs potatoes.

And next month, when the whalers come, the prices will double in the market.

She got a bargain.

Well, we need the money for the chapel for a paint bill coming due.

Well, of course, chapels don't grow like mushrooms.

I've built enough to know, but it's very beautiful.

Your Excellency.

We've made a crucifix over six feet high and decorated it with Hawaiian carvings.

You'll see it next month when you come for the consecration.

Yes.

I realize Your Excellency is busy.

Yes, yes.

I'm leaving.

You wouldn't need any tobacco here at the mission, would?

Our second crop is coming on.

It's beautiful.

Yes, yes I understand.

No more shipments of any kind without a written order.

Thank you very much, your Excellency.

Thank you.

I wrote my parents from Kohala.

Here I am, living on an island of volcanos one of which, so the natives believe, is the home of Madame Pele, goddess of eternal fire.

They worship her.

And whenever there's an eruption, they rush to propitiate her.

Well, one man has just gone by on his way to offer sacrifice.

So I seized this excellent opportunity to give him a short sermon on the fires of hell.

He listened politely, as though he knew more about the fires of hell than I did.

There are times when I am tongue tied before them.

I mean, I could know all the books of theology by heart, but still not know what to say to them.

But they seem to like me.

They call “Kamiano” which is their way of saying Damien.

I keep my body in good shape and servitude by spading vegetables and by raising lambs, which you will be interested to know.

Father, I bought for only two and a half francs apiece.

At last we have enough animals, vegetables and chapels.

And so this year I will have more time for studying and visiting the sick.

I didn't mention the yellow flags in my letters, but they were there on trees and fences, on sides of buildings, even on my chapel doors.

All lepers and leper suspects are hereby ordered to report the government health authorities within 14 days under pain of arrest.

Occasionally I'd see the sheriff's men with guns and dogs sniffing around the caves and valleys of my parish.

Sometimes I'd hear a distant shot.

One day I came back to find a young husband barricaded in my quarters, prepared to shoot anyone who tried to take his sick wife from him.

One night in the confessional, a young boy coughed, hemorrhaged, and covered me with blood.

Later in Honolulu, I saw that same boy in one of those processions of lepers down King to Bishop and on down Bishop to the waterfront.

I saw him forced from his parents arms into one of those small boats.

I can still.

Hear his father sob as I can see him crouching on the pier, straining to catch a last glimpse of the little boy he would never see again.

I could still hear.

His mother's farewell chant.

All this against an evening sky that seemed to mock us with its beauty.

What else could I do to comfort them but promise one day I would go to Moloka‘i to visit their son.

There came a time when I wasn't very welcome in this cathedral after the new bishop took over.

Not only because I was then a leper, now that I could understand, but because.

Oh well, never mind.

That's all over now.

60 years have gone by and here I am, back in my cathedral, and obviously once more in favor all kinds of dignitaries are filing past a koa casket, a solemn pontifical mass is being said, and the bishop is saying very extravagant things about me.

And reading a message from the Vatican.

Now, at last, I begin to understand what this is all about.

It would appear that my native country, Belgium, wants me to come home.

The Mass has ended.

The koa casket is carried from the cathedral, the army caisson is loaded and the military procession makes its way down.

Bishop to King, across King and on down Bishop to the pier where a white ship waits to receive me into her hold.

The military band begins a dirge but I, I hear the anguished farewell chants and the cries of lepers as small boats ferry them to that larger boat, anchored further out, waiting as my boat waits to receive them into her hold and carry them to Moloka‘i.

Moloka‘i.

Usually it's no trick to see her silhouette on the horizon, but today the light's not right.

Oh well.

Never mind.

Soon we'll come close enough to see her clearly.

The first time I saw Moloka‘i was when the ship that brought me to the islands sailed close enough for me to see part of her distinctly a narrow, sour tongue of land sticking out into the sea.

The loneliest, most useless piece of land you can imagine.

Barren, rock strewn, wind whipped.

I still find it inconceivable that I could pass so close without some premonition of what it would become.

A place of horror, a dumping ground for lepers.

The saddest spot on earth.

Of course, I had no way of knowing that while we were still two months at sea, a doctor in Honolulu had declared, “I take this opportunity to bring before the public a subject of great importance.

I refer, of course, to the rapid spread of that new disease, known to the natives as ma‘i pake It is, ladies and gentlemen, true Oriental leprosy, and it will be the duty of the next legislature to take some measures, effective but humane, by which the segregation of all those afflicted may be accomplished.” From opposite directions we, leprosy and I, had come to the Sandwich Islands.

Contemporaries, as you might say, although leprosy was as old as time as when it arrived, and I was barely 24.

The military dirge comes to an end.

A farewell chant begins softly and then fills the air.

Am I remembering or hearing it for the first time?

Is it for me or for lepers was long ago.

But I'm out of time now.

The chants, the boats, the two processions merge, become the same.

One could not be without the other.

The chant comes to an end.

The koa casket goes on board.

Airplanes cut the skies to ribbons.

A whistle blows and the white ship, impatient to be off, pulls from her slip and moves out into the channel.

Along the shore.

Off to the left, half hidden behind a grove of trees, is the government building, which housed the agency entrusted with taking measures effective but humane towards the segregation of the lepers.

The Board of Health.

In all good faith, they made those yellow flags and nailed them up throughout the kingdom, on trees and fences, on sides of buildings, even on my chapel doors.

In all good faith, I'm sure they purchased that sour tongue of land I first saw from the ship.

That natural prison surrounded on three sides by vicious surf, and on the fourth by sheer black cliffs that stopped the prevailing winds and made them dump their rain.

That shut out the sun at noon.

So that the land lay half a day in shadow, a place without a sunset, as the lepers called it.

In all good faith that government agency rounded up the lepers at gunpoint when necessary, and shipped them off with a pair of pants or a cotton dress, and the promise of daily rations to supplement what it was hoped the lepers themselves would be able to provide.

In all good faith, they called an empty wooden building a hospital, and promised to stock it with supplies and staff it.

Effective?

Yes.

It got the lepers out of circulation so the foreign population could relax.

Humane?

No.

It was a barbarous method of isolation.

That tongue of land became a living graveyard.

Can you imagine?

Hundreds, sometimes as many as a thousand lepers, crowded six, eight, ten into stinking, one roomed, windowless shacks.

Can you imagine a community of the living dead without a doctor or nurse?

No resident police, no law, no work, no comfort and no hope.

As for the hospital, an empty shack where the sickest ones lay on the floor in their own filth.

And they waited.

But nobody came.

Except the flies by day.

And the rats by night.

To feast upon their sores.

Some of the more able bodied lepers, determined to rest the last bit of pleasure from their lives, banded together at a separate place, dubbed The Village of the Fools.

Brewed liquor from the roots of plants and spent their days and nights drinking, gambling, hoarding and boasting.

A‘ole kanawai ma keia wahi In this place there is no law.

And raiding the rest of the settlement to steal young boys and girls to act as slaves.

Or to satisfy their lust.

There.

There Off to the right.

That’s Moloka‘i From here, you take it for a giant fish resting on its side in the blue water.

The second time I saw Moloka‘i was the day before Easter 1873.

A cattle boat en route from Maui to Honolulu.

Bishop Maigret and I aboard.

Stops long enough to unload some lepers and 50 head of cattle in her hold.

Lepers from the settlement crowd the landing.

Look at them.

Not one or two or three, but hundreds in varying stages of corruption, as though the grave had given up her dead.

Walking, limping, crawling.

Some come even in wheelbarrows.

Maimed and twisted bodies, sunken faces, missing limbs.

Maggot bloated sores.

How dear God, can such things be?

I cannot bear to look at them, and yet I cannot tear my eyes away as they hold out their rotting arms to welcome new lepers to this place of horror.

And they are singing.

Singing.

Leprosy and I are face to face at last.

The Catholic lepers are gathered around the bishop, begging him to send a priest.

Not four, on a rotating basis, as the bishop is suggesting, but one to live among them, to be a father to them, to call them by their name.

And he is saying that he cannot ask that sacrifice of anyone, and still they beg.

And they are right, Your Excellency.

They must have one priest who belongs to them, if only to prove to them that God has not forgotten them.

I mean, I suffer if I go a week without confession.

They must go months, years without confession and the Mass.

They must face death without the sacraments.

You don't have to ask Your Excellency.

I want to be their priest.

I beg to stay.

Impetuosity, the bishop says, unbalanced generosity.

Overreaction in the face of so much brutal suffering.

If it had been right and proper, he would have sent someone years ago.

He would have come himself.

Others before me have volunteered and have been denied.

No one.

No one, he says, can put aside all human consideration and live the one clean man among a thousand lepers.

I don't seem to hear what he's saying.

I only see their need and know that I must stay.

You see a man enters the religious life in answer to a call.

Later if he’s lucky, he receives a call within a call, he finds the niche he was meant to fill.

Well, this is my niche.

This is what I was meant to do.

This is why I was born.

So, like the stubborn Fleming that I am, I stick to my guns.

Until finally the bishop says, God help us both.

That if I promise to be prudent, I may stay as long as my devotion dictates.

And that's all I ask.

To stay, as long as my devotion dictates.

You have a priest, dear.

I am to be a priest.

The name is Kamiano.

Confessions all afternoon, all night if necessary.

And Easter Mass at sunrise.

The next morning, while it is still dark, the little church starts to fill with, God forgive me, creatures from a nightmare.

Limping, shuffling, coughing, spitting, touching with the fingers they have left the rosaries hung around their necks.

They fill the church up to the railing.

They crowd the doorways and the windowsills.

They keep on coming and fill the church to overflowing, not only with their corrupting bodies, not only with the stench, but with the sadness so unbearable.

I stand there dumb.

The vomit rises up in my throat.

I choke it back.

They kneel and wait.

And finally, in a voice I've never heard before, I say the words.

In nominee patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti.

Amen.

I still remember that first Easter Sunday.

I remember being taken from shack to flimsy shack to visit those too sick to leave their mats, appalled at such concentrated misery.

I remember wondering how a few leaves of the caster oil plant, tied together with coarse grass and anchored to a crumbling stone wall, could afford as much shelter as they did.

I remember being taken to the shack where Hua, the kahuna lived.

And while we were still there, she came outside and she pointed to a formation in the clouds.

You know, like a calabash mouth downwards.

And she said it meant that the king would die and Emma would be queen, and she would let the lepers all go home.

And then there was the wheelbarrow man who came out of a doorway carrying a large bundle of dirty rags.

Put it in a wheelbarrow, and pushed it to the empty jailhouse, shook it a little till the bundle rolled out.

I watched the bundle move.

I heard it grown, so it pulled itself up into the doorway and lay face down to die.

Later two lepers came, rolled the bundle over and tied it hands and feet like a luau pig to a pole, and carried it to the cemetery and buried it in a shallow grave.

And I remember that first night under the hala tree, with rats and scorpions and centipedes, to share my vigil, and the sounds of wild pigs at that shallow grave.

Eating their fill.

It was three old days before I would look at some of the lepers without revulsion.

Weeks before I could endure the graveyard smell, you know, a visiting doctor or an agent of the Board of Health would always put a piece of camphor into a handkerchief and tied around their necks, and from time to time stopped to spray themselves with camphor liquid.

I chose a pipe.

And strong black coffee.

First few weeks, I camped outdoors and then, with the help of some of the more able bodied lepers, we built my quarters.

Ambrose built that window frame.

He never touched a tool before.

Now they all think of his place as theirs somehow.

They come in here of an evening, and they go out on their lanai with their guitars.

And in the dark they sing and they play, and they forget that they are lepers.

Oh and another thing, there was no running water at the settlement.

We had to carry it long distances in dirty oil cans and let it stand for days.

I mean, I couldn't wash my hands or soak my feet without depriving somebody of his drinking water.

So I roamed the hills looking for a new source where we could build a reservoir.

Some of the lepers helped me lay the pipes, and we had running water.

On the day my house was built, three women, Melia, Philomela, and Elikapeka came and offered to keep house for me.

I mean, there leper husbands were dead, but they themselves were clean.

And when I hesitated, Philomela laughed “Manuahi, Kamiano.

Like you, we work for free.” How could I refuse?

I can still hear them laughing at me.

And their scornful laughter too.

When my enemies started to pedal scandalous stories about us.

Yes, Your Excellency, I do.

Leave my doors open and a light burning all night.

A priest can do no less.

Yes, I leave them open to women as well as men.

They get sick and frightened to.

Whoever comes to me comes as Christ.

Your Excellency knows that.

What do I care what the gossip say?

Yes, I do rub ointment on their sores with my bare hands.

What would Your Excellency have me do?

Wear gloves?

Attend only to the men and boys?

Leave the medicine on the gate post like visiting doctors do?

Talk to the lepers through closed windows?

Exhort them from the pulpit, but never, never chat with them in private.

I'm not an agent of the Board of Health, Your Excellency.

I am their priest, their father in Christ.

I am there to comfort them, to win their hearts and souls.

Yes, I did promise to be prudent.

And in my own way I am.

I mean, since I am there to comfort Christ in them, I am prudent never to let a shadow of fear or disgust come between us, never to let there be anything but love.

Oh, Your Excellency, I don't quarrel with other people's idea of prudence.

Let no one quarrel with mine.

Yes, I do share my pipe with them.

Well, if we're together of an evening, and I light my pipe, and one of them wants a puff or two, can I refuse, Your Excellency, Well can I?!

Yes, I, I've thought of that.

Well, if it's God's will, I'm prepared.

By remembering that those worm infested ulcers are the wounds of Christ.

That's how I managed to go from day to day.

Well, if that's the way Your Excellency sees it, I suppose I am a fool.

Yes, Your Excellency.

Thank you, Your Excellency.

Thank you very much.

I was, His Excellency said, a fool for Christ.

[Chanting in Hawaiian] You know, ever since Christ touched him and made him clean, we've had the leper on our conscience.

That's the only possible explanation for the cries of praise and wonder.

When word went round, the lepers had a priest.

Easy enough to deal with people when they praise you to your face, or just interrupt and tell them what to do to help.

Remind the candy merchant that leper children still like candy.

Suggest to the baker that a barrel of cookies wouldn't be refused.

Tell Richmond's wives that little leper girls would love scraps of that fine cloth to make dresses for their dollies, (That is, if they had any dollies.)

Why I told the man who ran the music store in Honolulu about blind Petero, and his fife and drum corps.

You know how leprosy could destroy Petero’s eyesight, but not his love of making music.

How we made instruments out of scraps of sheet iron so they could play at weddings and funerals, and at the landing when new lepers came, just to make sure the music store man didn't forget, I made a silly joke about sheet iron music.

You should have seen Petero’s face when those instruments arrived.

He felt them all over with his hands.

He lifted them to his cheek and there were tears in his poor blind eyes.

Easy enough to deal with people when they praise you to your face.

But when they put things about you in the paper.

This is absurd, Your Excellency.

Ridiculous.

The hero of Moloka‘i, a priest.

Renunciation.

And this?

This from the Prime Minister, without for one moment subscribing to his religion.

I can say this.

Father Damien is a martyr, a true Christian, martyr.

Can't they understand?

I'm only trying to do my priestly duty as I see it.

Can't Your Excellency do something to stop this silly chatter?

I want privacy, I want to live quietly with my lepers, doing whatever I can to prove to them that God has not forgotten them.

Oh, your Excellency, leprosy I can face.

It corrupts the body.

But praise like this breeds pride, and pride corrupts the soul.

I know, I know, all praise belongs to God.

But what if I forget?

What if I let this stuff corrupt my soul?

Is it a matter of obedience?

Then, Your Excellency must pray for me and ask others to do the same.

For I am very much afraid.

The bishop said that the church council had discussed the uproar and could find no human explanation for it.

Could it be the hand of God?

Could it be that the lepers time had come, and I was being used to bring the lepers cause before the world?

Well, whatever it was His Excellency said, I must give up my wish for privacy.

I must suffer such stuff gladly.

The more the reporters wrote about the lepers, the better.

I had my detractors to.

He said I had leprosy when I came to Molokai, but I concealed my condition to make myself a hero.

They said I collected money for the lepers and poured it into the coffers of the church.

They said I was a coarse and dirty man, and among other things, and I dare say it was more than a grain of truth that I was awkward, ill disciplined, long winded, hot tempered, hot tempered.

The Board of Health men would certainly say “aye” to that.

You see the day after that first big blow on Moloka‘i, when half our flimsy shacks were literally carried out to sea, I took the first boat to Honolulu.

At the chancery.

They told me His Excellency was calling on the president of the Board of Health, so I went over there.

Ah, your Excellency, they told me I'd find you here.

Mr.

President, I did knock.

Nobody answered it.

Well, I heard voices, so I came in.

Yeah, I realized I'm intruding, but it's most important.

Well, even if I am unwelcome, I must report the night before last.

The night before.

Oh, Your Excellency, ask him to let me speak.

The night before last, a hurricane and a waterspout demolished half hour shacks.

We need help at once.

Lepers too sick to move along on the ground, completely at the mercy of the elements.

We need food, clothing, medicine, everything.

Eventually we will need materials to replace the shacks.

But for the moment.

Who?

The captain can't give you a report.

He didn't even come ashore.

He thought it best for me to come.

No.

Mr.

President.

No.

I am not here as a Catholic missionary priest.

I am here as the self-appointed representative of every leper in that that charnel house you call a settlement.

It is a charnel house, Your Excellency, with lepers dying every day.

Not from leprosy, but from neglect, anemia, from lack of proper nourishment.

Dysentery, from contaminated food and water, bronchial pneumonia from lack of proper clothing.

Do you know, Mr.

President?

Do you know how long it is since most of them have tasted milk?

Now I protest such gross neglect!

No, Your Excellency.

No, Mr.

President, not until I'm through.

Now the shacks will have to be replaced with wooden cottages on trestles.

Proof against the kind of storm we get at Kalawao.

I can give you an estimate.

Well, if the Board of Health can't help us, we can ask elsewhere.

My haphazard begging makes you look niggardly?

Is $6 per leper per year enough to provide clothing for a person in perfect health.

Could you exist on sour poi and scraps of putrid meat for weeks on end?

Sometimes not even that.

When the stores are dumped overboard because of heavy seas and starving lepers, stand on the shore and watch the seas devour them.

As for that shack you call a hospital.

He's gone, Your Excellency.

I swore when I came through that door that I wouldn't lose my temper.

But when I saw him standing there, well fed, pink cheek, sanctimonious, and he told me I wasn't welcomed.

I'm very sorry, Your Excellency.

I am sorry.

I. I don't know what to say.

You think I said it rather well?

Oh, Your Excellency.

You have every right to be angry with me.

I know my temper is a serious flaw.

Well there is, Excellency said something which was to be a comfort to me the rest of my life, though I've tried not to use it as an excuse.

He said.

God seemed to put such flaws into his most zealous priests to keep them humble.

Oh, the gossips had their day too.

They said I slept around.

It wasn't true.

I kept my vow of chastity.

Not that I was never tempted.

The night of Sammy's wedding.

Sammy was the son of a nun leper family that lived outside the settlement.

It was an evening wedding, full moon.

Music, flowers.

A luau afterwards.

I had no horse at the time and it was too far for me to walk back to the settlement, so it was arranged that I stay overnight with Sammy's parents.

You know, everybody slept in the same big room on the floor.

After the father had blown out the candle and everything was still.

Someone unrolled a sleeping mat next to mine and stretched out a hand to touch me.

It was the young daughter of the family.

I got up.

And I went outside.

The moon was full.

It was cool and fragrant.

And every instinct in me was ablaze.

I walked over to the stone wall and I turned around.

She was standing in the doorway in the moonlight.

Naked.

I walked all night and I reached the settlement by morning.

But I could still see her standing in the doorway.

After that she came between me and the pages of my breviary.

When I tried to read my office.

Sometimes I saw her, her body on the cross.

I had no one to talk to.

No other priest.

When I did get to Honolulu to confess, the bishop told me that strong men must learn to turn temptation to their profit.

So after that, whenever she appeared to me, I would say out loud, God alone is worthy of my love.

He is my troth forever.

And that's how I kept my vow of chastity.

You see, when a priest works alone without a companion priest, he sometimes has to go weeks, months without confession.

Now, this was a great hardship for me, and when I first came to Molokai, it was understood that as long as I remained in good health, I was free to go once a month to Honolulu and stay overnight at the mission.

And then, quite abruptly, without any warning, the Board of Health suddenly announces that I am not to leave the settlement for any reason whatsoever.

I can, if I wish, declare myself a leper and remain confined as other lepers, or I can leave the settlement for good.

This is a trap, Your Excellency.

Doctors and clergy are not usually subject to such restrictions.

They want to get rid of me.

They know I can't live without the sacraments, but they want me to leave of my own accord, to make a laughing stock of myself, my order, and my church.

And then, maybe without the leper priests to write about, reporters will stop airing the awful truths about the settlement.

Yes, of course, Your Excellency.

My devotion still dictates that I remain.

But there are laws of God and laws of man, Your Excellency.

And whenever the two conflict, I follow the laws of God.

I am entitled to the sacraments.

I will continue to do as I have been doing.

And I will ask odds of no man, let them arrest me.

Let them throw me into jail.

Yes, well, they did arrest Father Aubert.

He disguised himself as a ruffian and he came to Moloka‘i, not to the settlement, but topside.

And in the dead of night he slid down that cliff, where, even in broad daylight, men and animals have fallen to their death.

Just so he could hear my confession, the sheriff's men were waiting for him at the top when he returned.

A few weeks later a leper boat comes from Maui.

The new lepers tell me that my provincial is aboard.

But when he doesn't come ashore, you know, as he usually does while they're unloading, I grab a landing craft and I paddle out.

I can see my provincial up at the railings, but he's been forbidden to come ashore.

So I start up the accommodation ladder.

“Stand back.

Order of the Board of Health” the captain shouts.

I beg five minutes with my provincial!

But the captain shakes his head.

So Father Modeste leans over the railings, makes the sign of the cross, and I kneeling in the little boat with captain, passengers and crew looking on, make my confession.

Bless me, father, for I have sinned.

Since my last confession.

I have completely lost my temper.

Seven times I have spoken rudely and with anger to agents of the Board of Health.

I have accused them of murdering the lepers by deliberate and intentional neglect, and I have not apologized because I believe it to be true.

At such times, I am so consumed with anger I am unfit to stand before the altar.

Three days ago, at the village of the fools, I raised my stick against someone.

I caught a man using little boy Kimi.

Using him, using him to satisfy his lust.

The man defied me.

He rushed me.

He rubbed his leprous stump across my face.

And I forgot myself.

And I beat him with my stick until the blood came.

I told him if I ever caught him touching any child that way again, I myself would tie the millstone round his neck and throw him into the sea.

What else could I do to protect the children?

The ship's whistle drowns out my words, but my provincial motions me and I go on and on until my heart is empty.

As the boat pulls away, I see him raise his hand and I feel the peace of absolution.

Eventually, at the intervention of the French consul, the order was modified, and as long as I remained in health, I was free to come and go at will.

The years go by, five, ten, eleven, twelve.

And my relations with the Board of Health go up and down.

Sometimes they criticize my work, sometimes they praise it, sometimes they flatter me, telling me that I am the strongest moral influence of the settlement.

And when the resident superintendent dies, they offer me his job $10,000 a year.

At the time I took their offer at face value.

Thank you.

But I must decline.

Well, some priests as you know take a vow of poverty.

No, I don't want to get around it.

I don't want less personal contact with my lepers.

My work is personal contact.

More money?

No, gentlemen.

If it were money keeping me here, I wouldn't stay five minutes.

It service to the lepers keeps me.

Yeah, yeah, I know I still be serving them, but for the salary, you see.

I mean, I'd be a hireling.

And all the work I've tried to do until now would be wasted.

My own mother wouldn't acknowledge me, her son, if she thought I was taking money for this work.

Yes, but you see, gentlemen, Christ told his disciples to go forth without gold or purse, to heal the sick and cleanse the leper.

And he would provide.

He has provided.

And when I'm penniless.

But there is a warehouse full of provisions for the lepers.

Do you think I could betray that mystery?

I'm sorry you don’t understand.

At the time I took that offer at face value.

But as things turned out, I think, well, let me put it this way.

It wasn't so much my meager talents as an administrator.

They would after.

It was another attempt to make me an employee.

at the Board of Health.

But life at the settlement wasn't all misery.

I mean, the leper is a long time a dying, and there are moments of happiness.

Can you imagine how Malia feels when I fix it up with sticks to replace these two missing fingers, and she finds she can still play the church organ, you know, she presses the keys and the music comes out, and the choir sings with joy enough to break your heart.

[singing] Daily, daily sing to.

[laughing] I like the mornings best.

With the young ones racing up and down the one main street, laughing, shouting, urging their horses on.

One day I'm carrying the body of a woman to her coffin in the church.

And it's half an hour we stand there in the sun until it's safe to cross.

And a funeral was a kind of celebration.

You know, the processions to the cemetery, the choir singing, blind Petero’s fife and drum corps, the rival burial societies with their different colored banners and sashes.

Well, it wasn't dreary, I can vouch for that.

And Charles Warren Stoddard came from California and Edward Clifford from London, and both write books about the settlement.

Stoddard calls his The Lepers of Moloka‘i, and I read favorite passages to the leper children.

They recognize themselves and enjoy.

The first glimpse of the settlement might lead the stranger to pronounce it the prettiest village in all the islands.

Its one main street, bordered with neat whitewashed cottages.

And- Oh, I forgot to tell you, after that big blow we did build those cottages, over 300 of them whitewashed inside and out.

We planted sweet potatoes at the back, against the time when there was no poi, and flowers in the front, and when the first red ginger bloomed like blood against the whitewashed wall.

The whole settlement turned out to see.

Didn’t they?

Didn't they?

Whitewashed cottages as we walked down the street, shouts of Aloha!

Well, Bit about the chickens?

All right.

Ah, here we are.

Father Damien brought out a handful of corn, and, sprinkling a little on the ground, uttered a peculiar cry.

In a moment chickens flocked from all quarters.

They lit upon his arms.

They fed from his hands.

They fought for footing upon his shoulders, even upon his head.

They covered him in feathers and caresses.

He stood knee deep in them.

What’s that Keona?

Bit about the Mass?

Oh, I don’t want to read all that.

After the Mass, a brief instruction period.

Then the priest has finished and everyone leaves.

One little boy forgot his cap and I ran after him.

And that was you?

That's why you wanted me to read it.

Stoddard goes on to say “I find it strange their hearts are so comparatively light.” And Stoddard right.

Our hearts are comparatively light because deep down inside we've come to know our lives have meaning.

We are a concentrated cry for help and our voices being heard.

We are a symbol of all of us.

And there are others, millions.

But ours is the only colony where everyone shares the same affliction.

We are a family.

Even the Prince of Wales takes notice of us.

We have escaped our degrading exile.

No Board of Health will ever again confine us to this sour tongue of land.

Hear that?

Ships from around the world salute us as they pass.

Even in the dead of night.

But there was always a question in people's minds is Damien immune to leprosy?

The answer came one December evening, 1884, after about 12 years of the settlement.

Oh, there had been mornings, you know, I mean spots here on my arm and a little corrosive supplement to clear those up.

Severe pain in my left leg.

But Doctor Trousseau said that was sciatica, and eventually it went away.

And my skin is a deeper bronze, maybe.

But then I'd been running around bare headed all the time.

You know, I've been up there in the wind and the sun, patching the church roof.

This particular evening I was writing a letter to my mother on her 83rd birthday, and I recalled my promise to come home after 12 years.

Suddenly, a terrible wave of homesickness came over me.

I wanted so much to hear her voice, to breathe some good, clean Flemish air, to walk in snow.

Hear the sleigh bells.

I pushed the letter aside.

Get up.

I find my breviary.

I pour some boiling water into a basin.

And then I sit down again to soak my feet.

I put my left foot in first I find my place.

I begin to read and I start to put my right foot in.

But I forgotten to pour in the cold water, so I jerked my right foot out.

Then I look at my left foot.

The skin is hanging from the flesh.

The blisters are already forming.

But there is no pain.

My beloved children, I have called you together to tell you something that concerns us all.

Ever since I first came to live among you, I have always said we lepers, because I wanted to be one of you.

God has seen fit to grant my wish.

I am in truth a leper.

Now, I can never leave you.

Oh, receive me!

Rejoice with me!

I remember whatever happens, God knows best.

If it's any comfort to you, I'm not taken by surprise.

I think I've always known.

Ever since that first night under the hala tree.

I think I knew it then.

Now we lepers will celebrate Mass together.

Pray that we go on.

Pray that we have time to finish what we have started, particularly the dormitories for the orphans.

My leprosy is speedily confirmed.

Not only by the doctors in Honolulu, but by the look in people's eyes, by the camphor in the handkerchief, by the hands clasped carefully behind the back.

I am no longer Father Damien.

I am a contaminated animal.

I am a leper.

Even my own provincial writes to me like this.

“If you insist on coming to Honolulu to try the new cure, you will go to the receiving station, where you will go to the leper chapel.

But you will not say Mass, because neither Father Clement nor I will consent to celebrate mass wearing the same vestments you have used.

And the sisters will refuse Holy Communion from your hands.” He's right, of course.

But does he have to spell it out for me?

Your attitude indicates that you possess neither delicacy of feeling nor charity towards your neighbor.

You think only of yourself.

Your very words reveal your egoism.

Didn't he realized I was thinking of my lepers?

If the cure could help me, I could take it back to them.

But there were others who were kinder.

Captain of the boat, you know, the one who wouldn't give me five minutes alone with my provincial.

He invited me to his cabin for a glass of wine.

But there are things worse than leprosy.

You see when a man gives his whole life over to one preoccupation, and at the end, doubts arise.

But the doubts are still there.

Like maggots in a leper’s sores.

You see, when it was discovered that I was a leper, the reporters had a field day.

The lion of Moloka‘i is wounded.

Damien hangs from a leper’s cross.

Soldier of Christ struck down!

And column after column about the lepers, the settlement and myself.

Letters of love and sympathy poured in.

Gifts of money.

Nearly 30,000 gold francs in all.

But the King, the government, the Board of Health and my own mission were all offended.

The articles didn't mention them.

When I tried to explain that I wasn't responsible for the articles, they told me I was drunk.

Drunk with pride, so drunk that I was dangerous, unfit to handle all that money.

In future, the Board of Health would receive all financial gifts, even those addressed personally to me.

Now, what would a government clerk know about the needs of a leper?

When I tried to protest, the new bishop advises an examination of conscience.

Have I really tried to do God's will?

Over my ceaseless activities, my unbalanced generosity, my caprices of self-will?

My stubborn lack of prudence, merely following the bent of my own temperament?

Have I deceived myself?

Have I a secret vanity that feeds on notoriety?

Have I let the praise of men corrupt me?

Now all this I could understand.

But when the new bishop chides me for making no distinction between a Catholic and a non-Catholic leper.

Your Excellency, you don't ask a leper if he's a Catholic.

If a dying woman tells you that she can't bear the thought of her body being devoured by wild pigs when she's dead.

You don't ask if she's a Catholic.

You make her a coffin, and when she dies, you bury her and you commend her soul to God, quite certain he won't ask her either.

When a leper on his deathbed cries out for absolution, you go to him and all distinctions vanish as you inhale his fetid breath and you hear his dying words.

And then, in the name of Christ, forgive him, regardless of when- Oh, no, Your Excellency.

No.

I was, he said a defective priest.

There are worse things to bear than leprosy.

Well, I've talked so much, we’re well past Moloka‘i.

She's back there in the mist.

We're in deep water now.

Heading for home.

Then one morning we drop anchor.

And I’m on Belgian soil once more.

Trumpets blare, cannon boom.

All the city bells of Antwerp ring out.

King Leopold the Third steps forward to salute.

And at last, towards evening, the traditional hearse receives the koa casket and, drawn by six white horses, makes its way slowly southwards in the direction of Louvain.

Somewhere around midnight we passed my father's farm.

Look, there's a light on in the parlor where we used to gather after supper my mother to read stories from a fat black book, Holy Saints and Martyrs.

And my father to enter figures in a thin black ledger.

The thin black ledger and the fat black book.

I can see it now, as clear as day.

The battle they were waging.

After my brother had finished reading stories from her black book, my father would call me over and show me the figures in his black book and tell me how, when I grew up, I'd go into the business with him and become a grain merchant like himself.

The Christmas I was 19, I told my father, I don't want to be a grain merchant father, I want to be a priest.

Yes, I know you counted on me.

I know you need me in the business.

I know it would eventually be mine.

But I want it, father.

I want to be a priest.

I have thought about it.

I am sure.

No, it's my vocation.

It's God, not you, will tell me what to do!

Then, on my birthday, three days after New Year, my father tells me that he's going into Louvain on business.

And would I like to ride in along with him?

I can visit with Auguste at Sacred Hearts house until it's time to come back home.

Auguste seems to be expecting me.

He introduces me to Father Wencelas.

We chat a little, and then Father Wencelas says he'll take me as a novice.

At dusk, my father returns to shake me by the hand and then ride home alone.

It's getting light.

In a little while we'll reach Louvain, and then the journey will be over.

Off to the left, in the lovely shrine of Our Lady.

That's where we say goodbye, my mother and I. Nearly three quarters of a century ago.

Her wrinkled fingers slipped silently along her beads.

She prays for my return.

Your prayers are answered, mother.

I've come home.

That was the American College of Louvain.

We've just passed.

I was refused admission there because of my rudeness of manner and appearance and total ignorance of any language, save his own.

Oh, and a little French, which he subjects to the most exquisite torture.

Well they were right about the language.

But I told them then, and I tell them now I come of peasant stock.

We peasants are not given to fancy language and delicate manners.

We say what we have to say.

We do what we have to do.

We are what we are.

It is our nature, and we will face death rather than change it.

Because we believe our nature comes from God.

The hearse is slowing to a halt outside Sacred Heart House.

Priests line the sidewalks, young boys too.

My heart goes out to them.

My novice days were painful.

Would I have survived, I wonder, without Auguste, without his gentle but relentless criticism?

I know, I know Auguste, you told me all that before.

But I do try.

Look, I know I'm much too clumsy.

Oh, I, I can't be like you, Auguste.

I can't be more subtle.

I have to say what I think.

The words come out in spite of me.

Oh, that is not true.

I do try to control my temper.

And I do pray for a docile heart.

But there's one thing I don't understand.

You tell me that I must learn to do everything, even good in moderation.

But Christ said we must give from the heart without measure.

And then one day, Father Wencelas says quite kindly that I must not aspire to the priesthood.

But suddenly Auguste fall sick, and he can't go to the Sandwich Islands.

So I bypass Father Wencelas, and I write directly to the father general in Paris, and I beg him to let me take my brother's place.

And when the father general right back to say to let me go, Father Wenceslaus throws the letter to cross my desk and shouts, “You're not ready yet!

You'll go out there and do more harm than good!” We’re in St.

Joseph's Chapel now.

It's quiet and peaceful.

Here, I will await the resurrection.

But I am lonesome for my lepers.

When I'm separated from them, with half the world between us.

When I'm separated from them, the doubts return.

Did I do more harm than good?

Did I betray you, Lord?

Was I like he said, a defective priest?

Was I merely following the bent of my own temperament?

But it was my temperament to seek you out with a passion had consumed me.

And once I felt the wound of your love for me, there was no other way.

You let me witness a festering mass of flesh, still praise the one who gave him life.

You were there with me in the leper shacks.

The agonies I tried to console.

The suppurated wounds, I nursed, were yours.

The agony of the wounds of Christ.

Tell me all this is true.

Tell me all this is true.

One word and all these doubts will vanish like smoke before the wind.

One word.

If it is the doubts themselves that come between me and my Lord, I will cast them out.

In your name, oh, sweet Lord Jesus Christ, I cast them out, and I know whatever I may have done, for good or ill, I am still your priest.

I trust in your prodigious love.

You are the Christ, and you are my God.

Major funding for this program was provided by a grant from the Hawaii Committee for the Humanities.

Additional funding provided by grants from Bank of Hawai'i, Foodland Supermarket Limited and Meadow Gold Dairies.