HCH photo by Patrick Downes
Damien art
Dr. Walter Chang, right, displays a watercolor of Blessed Damien and Kalawao’s St. Philomena Church by the late artist Peggy Chun, completed in 2006 while she was partially disabled with Lou Gehrig’s disease that eventually caused her death. The three-by-five foot koa-framed painting, appraised this year at $22,000, will be offered at the Damien Legacy Dinner’s silent auction along with two other “Peggy Chuns” shown here. Deacon Wally Mitsui, coordinator of canonization events in Hawaii, holds the original watercolor “Lava Pools,” valued at $3,000. The third art piece is a reproduction of a much larger mixed-media work by Chun of Father Damien, her final piece, created in collaboration with Holy Trinity School students. It has not been appraised. Dr. Chang, who donated all three works, was the primary physician documenting the unexplained cancer cure of his patient Audrey Toguchi that became the second miracle required of the church to canonize Blessed Damien. Dr. Chang was also Peggy Chun’s Nuuanu landlord.

One of an ongoing series of articles related to Blessed Damien’s rise to sainthood on Oct. 11 in Rome

Legacy dinner to raise travel funds for Kalaupapa patients

By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

The Diocese of Honolulu is sponsoring a banquet in Waikiki in July to raise money needed to send nine Kalaupapa residents and their traveling companions to Rome for the Oct. 11 canonization of Blessed Damien de Veuster.

The event, The Father Damien Legacy Dinner, will be 5 p.m., July 18, at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel.

The cooperating sponsor of the dinner is Ahahui o na Kauka, a non-profit organization that supports native Hawaiian medical students at the John Burns School of Medicine of the University of Hawaii.

Bishop Larry Silva and Dr. Nathan A.K. Wong, president of Ahahui o na Kauka, in a May 1 letter to “All in Hawaii who are devoted to Father Damien,” wrote that “all citizens of Hawaii are invited to participate in this gala.”

Extra money raised will go toward a video documentary being created on Father Damien, his canonization and related events, the transport of a Damien relic from Rome to Honolulu (see story below), and finally to the Richard Marks Endowment for native Hawaiian and other medical students.

Richard Marks was a former Hansen’s disease patient who was a Kalaupapa sheriff, historian and guide, and lifelong advocate for persons with leprosy. He died this past December.

The fundraising evening will offer musical entertainment, presentations on the history of Kalaupapa by Dr. Kalani Brady and Dr. Emmett Aluli, and a silent auction. Kalaupapa residents will attend.

Individual dinner seats are available for a donation of $200 each. Tables of 10 are available under two donation categories: Father Damien $5,000, and Mother Marianne Cope $2,000. All donations are tax-deductible.

For tickets, table reservations, or to make a monetary or silent auction donation, call Geri Kaleponi at (808) 349-9900, or Paul Cunney at 551-6500.

Checks may be written and sent to “Diocese of Honolulu/ Father Damien Legacy Fundraiser,” 575 Cooke Street, Suite A, P.O. Box 2805, Honolulu, HI 96813.

Relic to make mainland, island stops before final placement

A second relic of Blessed Damien will return to Hawaii in October following the canonization in Rome of the Belgian missionary to Molokai. Like the first — the bones of his right hand received after his beatification in Belgium in 1995 — the second relic will spend several weeks visiting all the Hawaiian Islands for veneration.

The canonization relic, Father Damien’s right heel bone, will then be enshrined at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, where the priest was ordained in 1864.

Immediately before its final stop, the relic will be honored in a civic, inter-faith ceremony on the Iolani Palace grounds.

A “first class” relic of a saint or person beatified is a part of the body, normally a piece of bone. A second class relic is a piece of clothing or object used by the person. A third class relic is an object that has touched a first class relic.

“We venerate it just as the Native Hawaiians honor the iwi of their ancestors or we visit the remains of our loved ones at the cemetery,” Bishop Larry Silva said.

“The presence of the relic draws us closer to the person in the hope that we can be inspired to love God and give ourselves for our neighbor even as Father Damien did,” he said.

The relic will be given to Bishop Silva during the canonization ceremony Oct. 11 in Rome. Before it comes to Hawaii it will spend a week on the mainland making stops at places where the bishop has personal ties.

The first stop will be Detroit where the Bishop Silva’s former bishop, Allen Vigneron, is the archbishop. The second destination is San Francisco where the body of Damien had been honored in 1936 on the way to Belgium after its exhumation at Kalaupapa.

The relic’s final mainland stop is Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, where Bishop Silva grew up and was ordained a priest.

The relic then spends Oct. 18-31 on the neighbor islands, first on the Big Island, then to Maui, Lanai, Kauai and Molokai, before coming to Honolulu and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.

The bishop said that he, or a priest designated by him, will accompany the relic from Rome to Honolulu.

Father Damien’s first relic from the 1995 beatification was also celebrated at Iolani Palace and made the rounds of the islands before it was sealed in the missionary’s original grave in Kalawao, next to his St. Philomena Church.

The relic came in a eight by eight by 12 inch zinc box, one of 10 that contain the complete remains of Father Damien in a tomb at the Sacred Hearts Congregation’s St. Joseph Chapel in Louvain, Belgium.

Following the beatification, the relic was wrapped in white tapa, which is used to keep the remains of special people, and then in black tapa, a color reserved for the alii or chiefs, and transported in a koa reliquary. The tapa and reliquary were made by Hawaiian cultural artisans especially for the relic.

The relic was reinterred in Kalawao on July 22, 1995.

Relic itinerary

This is the tentative schedule for the relic tour following Father Damien’s canonization.

• Oct. 11: Relic is received at canonization in Rome
• Oct. 12: Mass, Pontifical North American College, Rome
• Oct. 13: Newark, N.J., stopover
• Oct. 14: Detroit
• Oct. 15: San Francisco, evening veneration at St. Mary’s Cathedral
• Oct. 16: Oakland
• Oct. 17: Kona
• Oct. 18-20: West Big Island Vicariate
• Oct. 21-23: East Big Island Vicariate
• Oct. 24-26: Maui
• Oct. 27: Lanai
• Oct. 28-29: Kauai
• Oct. 30: Molokai (topside)
• Oct. 31: Kalaupapa, Molokai
• Nov. 1: Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, Honolulu, procession to Iolani Palace for civic/interfaith service, return to final destination at cathedral

Oahu vicariate pilgrimage days to cathedral

• Nov. 2: West Honolulu
• Nov. 3: East Honolulu
• Nov. 4: Central
• Nov. 5: Leeward
• Nov. 6: Windward

Sister or St. Francis Richard Marie Toal venerates a relic of Blessed Damien in 1995 in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace. The relic, traveling in a polished koa box, was given to the Hawaii deligation by Pope John Paul II at the June 4, 1995, beatification of Blessed Damien in Belgium. The relic was eventually put to rest in Father Damien’s original grave in Kalaupapa.