THE parish church of Dawesville in the Diocese of Bunbury will be dedicated to the patronage of St Damien of Molokai, the ‘leper priest,’ this Sunday, 22 January.
It will be dedicated at a 10am Mass by Bishop Gerard Holohan of Bunbury exactly six years to the day after the parish was founded on 23 January 2005.
The parish also maintains a close relationship with members of the Anglican Communion in and around Dawesville; it will be used every Sunday at 10.30am for Anglican services as well.
St Damien de Veuster, a young Belgian-born priest who was a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, worked on the island of Hawaii for eight years before volunteering in 1873 to work at a leprosy colony on nearby Molokai, where he served as pastor, doctor and counsellor to some 800 patients.
In 1884, he contracted leprosy but, refusing to leave the island for treatment, continued to work until the month before his death at age 49 in 1889.
St Damien was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in October 2009; during the ceremony Pope Benedict said St Damien “felt at home” as “a leper with the lepers” during the final years of his life.
“He invites us to open our eyes toward the ‘leprosies’ that disfigure the humanity of our brothers and sisters and that today still call, more than for our generosity, for the charity of our serving presence,” he said at the time.
St Damien has been considered an intercessor for patients with leprosy and, more recently, HIV and AIDS. The Vatican’s liturgical programme for the 2009 canonisation described St Damien as a voice for “rejected people of all kinds: the incurably ill (victims of AIDS or other diseases), abandoned children, disoriented youths, exploited women, neglected elderly people and oppressed minorities.”