VIDEO COURTESY AP
Followers of two Catholic saints need to see where they spent a significant portion of their lives caring for Hawaii’s lepers.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Top, the Rev. Patrick Killilea walks toward cliffs of Kalaupapa.
COURTESY DAMIEN MUSEUM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Above, Kyong Son Toyofuku, left, her husband, Lance Toyofuku, center, and sister Alicia Damien Lau celebrate Mass at St. Philomena Church on a pilgrimage to Kalaupapa.
ASSOCIATED PRESS / JULY 18
Kyong Son Toyofuku, left, her goddaughter Yunra Huh, 50, and her husband, Lance Toyofuku, stop at St. Philomena Church from Kalaupapa. The church was used by Father Damien and his parishioners in the 19th century while he lived and cared for lepers.
KALAUPAPA, Molokai >> Kalaupapa beckoned to Kyong Son Toyofuku. She had long prayed to visit the hard-to-reach Molokai peninsula, trapped by its deep-green, sheer sea cliffs and rugged, black-rock shores that glisten under the Pacific’s pristine waters.
As a Catholic who attended Mass and was committed to St. Damien of Molokai, she sought to walk where he walked, to pray where he prayed, and to bear witness to the place, whether impressive or haunting, in which the priest spent an indispensable part. of her life worrying about him. For the marginalized who suffer from leprosy.
The pilgrimage to Kalaupapa, explained by its natural isolation in northern Molokai, is logistically difficult to undertake under general circumstances, with long-standing regulations prohibiting anyone under the age of 16 from going there. This is even more true today due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that have canceled all pilgrimages and tours of the old national park for the peninsula’s eight remaining former patients. Park officials and the state fitness branch have eased restrictions and are contemplating when to resume pilgrimages and organized tours.
For Toyofuku, a number of much-needed things came together at just the right time this summer and his dream came true. At the invitation of the priest of Kalaupapa, he followed in the footsteps of Father Damien in a position where for more than a century, almost no one wanted to pass, and many never would.
Just thinking about Damien’s determination towards poor health brings her to tears. “Every morning I pray to him,” she said, crying.
Her husband, Lance Toyofuku, overcame all the difficulties of God’s plan.
“Maybe other people who need this to happen can go,” he said. “You don’t need a million people to go there every year. “
Kalaupapa, now a safe haven for those still living on the peninsula, was once the government’s reaction to a fatal leprosy epidemic in the 19th century that persisted into the next century. The policy of disease containment forced those in poor health to live out their days in the primitive village that evolved as ship after ship threw out other people uprooted from everything they had ever known.
Missionaries, such as Father Damien and Mother Marianne, who is also a Catholic saint after her service on the island, moved to Kalaupapa to meet the physical and religious desires of the new residents. Patients were immersed in the pain of illness and separation, said Alicia Damien Lau, one of two Catholic sisters lately living and serving on the peninsula, but patients still found happy times and ways to thrive.
“The patients are all saints in a sense,” he said.
More than 8,000 people, mostly Native Hawaiians, died at Kalaupapa, including Damien, who eventually contracted leprosy, later called Hansen’s disease. The Belgian priest, born Joseph De Veuster, is credited with drastically improving living conditions in the settlement. More than a century after his death in 1889, Damien’s devotion to the ailing still inspires people worldwide, as does the dedication of St. Marianne.
The Rev. Patrick Killilea, a Kalaupapa priest and de facto tour guide, greeted the Toyofukus with his Irish accessory after their plane landed recently. They got into their Toyota minivan with a sign on the sliding door that said, “P. Pat’s Paddy Wagon. ” and headed to one of the first stops on their day trip: Damien’s original grave.
“When you look around, you can feel the peace and spirit of the paintings inside of you,” said Lance Toyofuku, who lives in Hawaii’s capital. “It’s not like being in Honolulu with all the cars and all the people. It’s a position where you can get closer to God because you don’t have all those distractions.
At the end of a gravel road, Damian’s tomb sits next to St. Philomena, the church that the priest enlarged in 1876. The National Park Service, which deals with Kalaupapa’s cultural and ancient resources, restored the church before Damian’s canonization in 2009. His body, transferred to Belgium in 1936, is no longer there. Only one relic remains: the priest’s right hand, reburied in 1995 at the site.
Damien’s love for Kalaupapa’s people was unconditional, said Barbara Jean Wajda of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities. She and Lau live on Kalaupapa, and helped the Toyofukus get a seat on the flight to the peninsula.
“He ate with them. He was dressing his wounds,” she said. And it doesn’t matter if they’re Catholic or not. But I wanted them to feel enjoyed by God and to take care of themselves.
She pointed to a field beyond Damien’s ornate grave and explained how many leprosy patients were buried without markers. The priest took it upon himself to build coffins and rebury some of those found in shallow graves, she said.
The organization also prayed at St. Marianne’s tomb. Known as the “mother of the outcasts,” German-born Marianne Cope died in Kalaupapa in 1918 from herbal causes and was canonized in 2012.
Marianne arrived in the colony months before Damien’s death, and her determination to care for the other residents of Kaluapapa continues to provide comfort in the face of tragedies, such as this summer’s devastating fires in nearby Maui.
Shortly after the fire destroyed most of Sacred Hearts School, Principal Tonata Lolesio returned to the ashes of the Lahaina campus. He searched for a 12-inch steel statue of Marianne.
A quote from the nun served as a message to the school: “Nothing is impossible. There are roads that lead to everything.
Lolesio never discovered Marianne’s statue, but the saint’s words direct the school as it continues to teach students at a makeshift transition site.
“It’s the right reaction to a disaster,” he said. We just have to position our religion and accept that God will provide for us as He did for it. “
Kalaupapa is the final resting place for many people, added Honolulu’s great-grandfather, Bishop Larry Silva. Because of the lingering stigma of this misunderstood disease, Silva, like many others, didn’t realize this part of family history until he became an adult. When he participated in pre-pandemic pilgrimages, he displayed his great-grandfather’s gray headstone, as well as visits to the graves of Damien and Marianne to the colonies.
“The story of Kalaupapa is the story of isolation and fear,” said Silva, whose diocese includes the peninsula. But that’s not the full narrative, he said. “People were resilient and tried to make the best of it. And I think that’s the story of Kalaupapa, too.”
In the mid-20th century, a cure for Hansen’s disease was discovered. When he was lifted from exile in 1969, some former patients chose to remain in Kalaupapa. It’s such a striking setting that Sister Wajda said, “It’s almost like a desecration to see how beautiful it is. “
Kalaupapa’s quiet deepens at night, save for the crashing of ocean waves. In the summer air the glow of invasive axis deer eyes pierce the darkness as throngs of them dart in between the settlement’s small, quaint houses — many of them vacant.
Early in the morning, Meli Watanuki’s van is parked at St. Francis Church.
She decided to move to the colony in 1969, after her husband abandoned her and took their son with him after he was diagnosed with leprosy. Now 88, he attends daily 6 a. m. Mass. with the Catholic sisters and an informal worker from the Ministry. health.
Catholicism is vital to his circle of relatives in his local American Samoa, Watanuki recalled while speaking to Associated Press reporters he had invited to his home after Mass. As a Hawaiian monk seal rested at low tide a few feet away, Watanuki explained that she would not be informed about Damien and Marianne until they moved to Kalaupapa.
“I love you so much,” she said through tears. They keep me like that, they make me strong. “
She loves it when other people accompany her and when the church brings in pilgrims, she says. “They have to respect this position,” he said. This position is a holy position. “
Bishop Silva and other Church leaders are keen to see more people make pilgrimages to Kalaupapa or, as the bishop describes it, pray with their feet. Once the restrictions are lifted, the diocese will be able to resume the trips it used to organize in partnership. with agencies owned by citizens of Kalaupapa, one of the few tactics that the general public has been able to make a stopover on the peninsula in the past.
“I have a whole list of other people who have said they would like to go,” he said. “You feel the sacredness of the position when you’re there. “
According to Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, a Molokai member of the Maui County Council, many Molokai citizens are nervous about sightseeing in Kalaupapa, which is sacred to Native Hawaiians like her.
“For a lot of people on Molokai . . . we are glad that Father Damien and Mother Marianne. . . be known for the work and sacrifices they’ve made,” he said, but added that other people want to be too. respectful of this place. ” of deep, deep sadness and tragedy.
He worries about what the situation will be when there are no more former patients living there.
The walls of the sisters’ house, the largest house in Kalaupapa, are filled with photographs of the sisters who worked in the colony after Marianne. Lau and Wajda may be the last.
“Sister Alicia and I are committed to staying until the last patient leaves or dies,” Wajda said. “We don’t own anything, neither land nor property. “
They’ve slowly been giving away the home’s belongings.
When there are no longer any patients, the state Health Department will also leave.
“And we feel connected to the patients, to the land, to the saints who were here, declared and undeclared,” Wajda said. “And I think the national park will tell that story, but from a different perspective. “”
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