THE REAL DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI

[Michie]

Marisol Escobar’s statue of St. Damien of Molokai has graced the statuary hall in the U.S. Capitol since 1969. The people of Hawaii chose this statue to mark their tenth anniversary of statehood. It stands out, in part, because of Escobar’s distinctive blocked style. “Marisol” (as she was called) sculpted her subjects almost as square frames, flattening them like screens upon which she could project her own presence. One critic called this “feminine playfulness” set against square “patriarchy.” Marisol said she simply preferred to see herself in her subjects this way.

Yet as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently discovered—after claiming that Marisol’s statue represents “patriarchy and white supremacist culture”—sometimes reality resists our projections. In the case of Damien of Molokai, the reality is quite different from the flattened image upon which the New York congresswoman has projected her presence.

Fr. Damien was born Jozef De Veuster in Tremelo, Belgium, on January 3, 1840. At age nineteen he entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary—an order that had formed amid the upheavals of the French Revolution. These priests had refused to join the republic’s “Civil Constitution of the Clergy.” Far from being “colonialist,” the order was founded by priests in exile who wanted only to conform souls to “the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary.”

The congregation (nicknamed the “Picpus Fathers” after their founder’s town in France) devoted themselves to missionary work in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, including the Kingdom of Hawaii. The first six bishops of Hawaii were all members of this Congregation. After Jozef De Veuster’s formation, the order sent him to the Hawaiian mission. In 1864 he chose a new religious name, Damien, and gave his life in service to the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary—not patriarchy and white supremacist culture. The bishop ordained Damien a priest as soon as he arrived in May of that year.

Continued below.
The Real Damien of Molokai | C. C. Pecknold

 

[anna ~ grace]

Damien of Molokai was a Saint; any Christian should be able to see that, no matter how one looks at it.

Interesting how they go after Christian Saints, yet say nothing of Muhammad’s ‘wives’ Rayhanna and Maria al-Qibtiyya, who were basically slaves captured and used by Muhammad based on race and faith. Nothing about that.