On Oct. 11, the Catholic Church will bestow on Father Damien de Veuster the title of “saint,” 120 years after the Belgian missionary died on Molokai among his beloved flock of outcasts, a victim of the same suffering that had drawn him into their midst, compelled to impart God’s love and mercy.

The pope announced the canonization date on Feb. 21 at a “consistory for certain causes of canonization” in Clementine Hall in the Apostolic Palace near St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Bishop Larry Silva was there.

Pope Benedict announced nine other canonizations at the consistory. Five of them will take place on April 26, and Damien’s and four others on Sunday, Oct. 11. Pope Benedict will preside at both ceremonies in St. Peter’s Square outside St. Peter’s Basilica.

“We certainly canonize saints because we are all called to be saints,” the bishop said. “I hope that Damien’s canonization will be an occasion for us to be renewed in our faith in God and in our commitment to serve others as Damien did, especially the poor, the needy.”

“The people of Kalaupapa have certainly been waiting for this for many generations,” Bishop Silva said. “I thank God that it happened while there are still some patients there.”

“I think it really will mean that the story of Kalaupapa will be told forever,” he said. “And Damien and Mother Marianne — whom we hope will be a saint soon — will be the storytellers in perpetuity of the suffering, and yet the human warmth and the faith that changed the suffering into a place of love and joy.”

Father Marc Alexander, vicar general, celebrated a Mass in thanksgiving for the announcement, at 5 p.m., Feb. 21, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace. He said a second Mass of Thanksgiving the next day, Feb. 22, at St. Francis Church in Kalaupapa.

Father Damien was born Joseph de Veuster on Jan. 3, 1840, in the small town of Tremeloo, Belgium, the son of a farmer-merchant. He was expected to take over the family business but instead, at age 18, followed his older brother into the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

He made his first vows on Feb. 2, 1859, and took the name Damien after the ancient physician and martyr. In 1863, when his older brother Father Pamphile fell ill and was unable to join a missionary contingent headed for Hawaii, Damien received permission to take his place.

Father Damien’s first assignment was to the Big Island, at Puna for less than a year, and then to Kohala and Hamakua. He spent about nine years on the Big Island endearing himself to the Hawaiian people, learning their language, sharing their food, and traversing their land, while building churches, spreading the Gospel, and baptizing hundreds.

Meanwhile, the leprosy bacillus, probably introduced to Hawaii by Chinese immigrant laborers, had created a health crisis in the Hawaiian kingdom, particularly among native Hawaiians who had little immunity to it. In 1863, King Kamehameha V decreed that persons found to have leprosy, later called Hansen’s disease, be sent to Kalaupapa, a small remote, isolated peninsula on Molokai’s rugged northern coast. On the peninsula’s east side, called Kalawao, the victims of leprosy were left to fend for themselves.

Sacred Hearts Bishop Louis Maigret, extremely concerned about the plight of those abandoned at Kalawao, asked for priests to volunteer to serve there. Father Damien was the first, arriving on May 10, 1873. Later, at his insistence, his temporary assignment became a permanent one.

Damien had found that Kalawao, abandoned for nearly a decade, had collapsed into chaos. The neglect had resulted in despair, drunkenness, licentiousness and abuse.

He soon decided that his task could not be just a spiritual one. He quickly became the residents’ doctor, nurse, carpenter, engineer, farmer, legal advocate, landscaper, plumber, supplies procurer, grave digger and coffin maker.

With the help of the stronger patients, he built houses, an orphanage and a church. He enlarged the hospital, laid water pipes, and improved the boat landing and the road leading to the wharf.

Disregarding contemporary medical precautions, he ate with his people and accepted them into his house. He visited the sick and every house in his settlement at least once a week. He organized religious associations, a children’s band and a choir.

He even instituted perpetual devotion of the Blessed Sacrament, a practice special to his religious Congregation. The number of catechumens increased by tens and then by hundreds.

But he was never too busy to neglect his spiritual life. Into each day he scheduled prayer, adoration, meditation, Mass, the Divine Office, spiritual reading and the rosary. “Without the Blessed Sacrament, a position like mine would be intolerable,” he wrote.

Father Damien contracted Hansen’s disease in 1884. He died on April 15, 1889, at age 49, the Monday of Holy Week, 16 years after setting foot at Kalaupapa.

His body was buried under the hala, or pandanus, tree where he first slept at the settlement, beside the church he built, St. Philomena. In 1936, at the request of the Belgium government, Damien’s body was exhumed and brought to the country of his birth and laid to rest in St. Joseph Chapel in Louvain.

He was declared “venerable,” the first major step in the canonization process, in 1977 by Pope Paul VI. Pope John Paul II beatified Father Damien in Belgium in 1995.