Prayer to Saint Damien of Molokai — apostle of the lepers

Belgian priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, born Jozef de Veuster in Tremelo on 3 January 1840. A missionary in Hawaii, he volunteered in 1873 to serve permanently the lepers isolated in the colony of Kalaupapa, on the island of Molokai. He cared for bodies and souls — building houses, dressing wounds, digging graves, celebrating the sacraments. In a letter to his brother he wrote: “I make myself a leper with the lepers, to gain all to Jesus Christ” (cf. 1Cor 9:22). He himself contracted the disease and began to start his sermons saying “We lepers.” He died on 15 April 1889. Beatified by Saint John Paul II in 1995 and canonised by Pope Benedict XVI on 11 October 2009. Feast: 10 May.

God of all mercy, who gave to Saint Damien of Molokai a shepherd’s heart to make himself a leper among the lepers and to bring Christ to those whom the world had abandoned: grant us, through his intercession, the courage to draw near to the sick, the isolated and the discarded without fear or revulsion, seeing in them your Son; and give to your Church missionaries who love to the very end, even at the cost of their own life. Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory be.