HCH/Anna Weaver

Jerick Sablan wears a backpack containing St. Damien’s relic while hiking down the Kalaupapa Trail Oct. 31.

In a saint’s footsteps

St. Damien’s relic is carried down the Kalaupapa trail for a final Molokai visit

By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald

KALAUPAPA

The sky was clear, the breeze gentle, the view postcard-perfect and the path twisting as eight Molokai residents and two Damien Memorial School students made their way down the Kalaupapa Trail Oct. 31 from the Topside entrance to the Kalaupapa peninsula 1,800 feet below.

In a symbolic journey recalling the countless treks made by Father Damien de Veuster up and down the sea cliffs two centuries before, this time it was the Damien students and three Molokai youth who took turns carrying Damien on their backs, stopping every few switchbacks to hand off the brown backpack containing the wooden relic box in which St. Damien’s foot bone was tucked.

The hour-and-a-half hike started around 7:15 a.m. after a short prayer led by Sacred Hearts Father Clyde Guerreiro, the pastor of Topside’s St. Damien Catholic Parish, who was also one of the hikers, and a quick orientation by St. Damien parishioner and hike guide Bo Mahoe. National Park Service rangers Randy Watanuki and Amy Sakurada also came along for guidance.

“I’m glad we’re walking down because we’re doing exactly what St. Damien did to serve our island,” Mahoe said, as he made sure-footed steps down the trail he takes every Friday guiding people on Damien Tours visits to the peninsula.

He added Father Damien would have hiked steeper paths wearing more cumbersome, 19th century clothing and carrying supplies back and forth. “I marvel at his ability to do that.”

For the Oct. 31 hike, a backpack was used to hold the small reliquary so the hikers could have their hands free in case the uneven trail caused any slips or falls. Luckily there were none. Both Damien Memorial School students said the hike went quickly and easily.

Senior Jerick Sablan, 17, said he had a sensation of warmth when he put on the backpack. “It’s just an experience that you have only once,” he said. “It was an honor to carry it.”

“No one can take the experience away from you,” added fellow senior Jonathan Padron, 18. “You feel good when you’re carrying [the relic.]”

HCH/Anna Weaver

From left, Travine Johnson, Jerick Sablan, Lani Johnson, Jonathan Padron and Kamalani Bicoy shared relic bearer duties.

The boys were selected as relic carriers because of their high grades and community service involvement. Two other students chosen were unable at the last minute to make the trip.

Another relic bearer and the backpack’s owner, Kamalani Bicoy, 16, found his early morning experience oddly dreamlike.

“It was pretty weird to just put Damien in my bag and walk around with him on my back,” he said. The other two Molokai teens who carried the relic were brothers Travine and Lani Johnson. All three were chosen for their church involvement.

Father Guerreiro said, “I thought [the hike] would be a great experience for our young people and also for us older people to really be a chance for following in Damien footsteps.”

The presence of Damien

HCH/Anna Weaver

Sacred Hearts Father Lane Akiona and Sacred Hearts Sister Helene Wood place leis on top of St. Damien’s reliquary at the bottom of the trail.

After 26 switchbacks, no injuries, and some goat and deer spotting midway down the trail, the group paused to put on yellow, long-sleeved Molokai T-shirts, unfurl the six banners and flags they’d carried down with them, and take out the reliquary.

The hikers emerged at the Kalaupapa trailhead at 8:37 a.m. where a large group waited to greet them. The small box was placed in the larger koa reliquary that had carried it around the islands over the last several weeks. Bishop Larry Silva welcomed it with a prayer.

Then the relic was driven off to St. Philomena in Kalawao, followed by two yellow school buses filled with the 12 visiting California bishops, Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Bishop Silva, and other dignitaries and visitors.

On the bus ride over to Kalawao, San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop William Justice remembered the last time he was in Kalaupapa 30 years before. He’d been guided around by the late Richard Marks, a well-known resident and patient who started Damien Tours.

Bishop Justice had earlier been at the Oct. 15 prayer service in San Francisco where Damien’s relic was present and said that Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco’s words at the service “about the dedication and care for people just got to me and reminded me why I admired him.”

“I know why I am here. The Lord wants me to care,” Bishop Justice said.

Archbishop Niederauer was among the bishops who traveled to Molokai. He had presided at Mass at Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Church in Kaluaaha on Topside Molokai the day before.

“We used the very chalice Father Damien used,” he said. “It was an enormous privilege, a moving experience for me. St. Damien was very present with us, connecting with us over 120 years.”

The interfaith celebration in the Kaunakakai ballpark the evening of Oct. 30 also left a deep impression on the archbishop.

The Molokai community was “filled with faith, jubilant and happy,” he said, “the different religious traditions … all the religious faiths seeing him [St. Damien] as a holy man.”

“I was delighted by the beauty of the music and prayers — the simplicity of it,” he said. “They don’t have to be grand in style to be very deeply felt and expressive.”

A beautiful day

During a stop at the pavilion in Kalawao before the Oct. 31 Mass at St. Philomena, retired San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius Wang said he had waited a long time to come to Molokai. Gazing around at the gorgeous day and ocean view, he said, “I look at the beauty of this place and compare it to the misery in its past.”

Bishop Wang added that when he returns to California he’ll share with people about “how much St. Damien has sacrificed for love” and how “we have a lot to learn in imitation of St. Damien.”

Cardinal Danneels presided at the 10:30 a.m. Mass at St. Philomena attended by about 75 people. The church was dazzling with a new roof, new interior and exterior paint, and many other renovations done to restore it to the way it looked during Father Damien’s time.

Bishop Daniel Walsh of Santa Rosa, Calif., who concelebrated the Mass with the cardinal, Bishop Silva and the other visiting bishops, said, “To be in the church that [Damien] built is most moving, most impressive.”

“It’s a beautiful day,” he said, seeing “the faith and pride of the people of Molokai to have their saint come back.”

Bishop Walsh said he hopes the rest of the country’s Catholics learn of St. Damien’s “life of faith and sacrifice.”

“As you read more and more about him, [you discover] he was a fantastic priest who loved his people,” Bishop Walsh said. “He was willing to be a voice for the voiceless.”

After Mass, lunch was served at St. Francis Hall in Kalaupapa. As she finished her lunch, Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Margarita Wouters explained why she had traveled all the way from her mission work in Ecuador to be on Molokai for this occasion.

As a Belgian raised in Damien’s hometown of Tremelo, she just knew she had to come to the island when his relic came back. “Being here, to stay and to feel, and to know that Damien has walked here, he was working here …” Sister Margarita said. “Being from Tremelo, that was my dream.”

The day ended with a prayer service at Blessed Mother Marianne’s gravesite and a quick stop at the restored headstone of Bishop Silva’ great-grandfather at the cemetery on the way to the Kalaupapa airport.

Father Guerreiro believes that the Oct. 30 and 31 events on topside Molokai and in Kalaupapa and Kalawao helped people know Hawaii’s saint even better.

“I’ve always believed that you can’t understand Father Damien until you understand both areas of Molokai,” he said. “Anyone that participated in our celebrations yesterday and following up with today will have a much better understanding of the heroism of Father Damien.”