Local priests should
tout Father Damien

When you've got a genuine bigger-than-life hero in your ranks, why wouldn't you spotlight him?

A historical figure, a man known around the world -- in his own time and still true 100 years later -- for the way he lived out his belief in a remote spot among outcast people, Father Damien's story is worthy of retelling and selling.

The pope gets it.

The current residents of Kalaupapa, where Damien lived and died, get it.

Hundreds of visitors to Hawaii who seek to at least step in his footprint get it.

The priests who are Damien's spiritual heirs don't seem to get it.

This is the first anniversary of the "temporary" closing of the Damien Museum in Waikiki. The telephone is no longer in service. There is no plan to reopen the exhibit whose highlight was a few possessions of the missionary who served leprosy patients banished to the Molokai peninsula for 16 years until his death from the disease in 1889.

The priests in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary need to take a lesson from the "new" Christian sects, those evangelical marketing strategists who enhance the religious experience with sale booths -- the sermon on tape, the pastor's books, the logo T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Here's Damien on the fast track toward sainthood with all the bells and whistles of that Vatican process. It could happen in the next year or two. Isn't someone designing the T-shirt, the poster, the candleholder? Won't someone at least print a holy card or a postcard with his mug shot, the minimal souvenir for a visiting fan?

Damien is just the kind of role model that Pope John Paul II loves. The pope has named more than 470 saints during his 25 years in office. He streamlined the ponderous process of scrutiny used to sort out exemplary Christians whose life has something to teach people, especially youths, in these materialistic and anxious times.

The priest who is ushering the sainthood cause through the bureaucratic maze was back in Hawaii this summer, fine-tuning a document prepared last year by local church folks. The Rev. Emilio Vega Garcia checked details of a medical case that is the last step for the cause. An Oahu woman testified that she prayed for Damien's help when facing death from lung cancer in 1998. A doctor's report in Hawaii Medical Journal two years later documented the "spontaneous regression" of the disease. It is considered the miracle required to dub Damien a saint -- if Vatican theologians in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints ever get to it.

The Damien Museum sign still hangs on a low outbuilding at the back of St. Augustine Church across from Kuhio Beach. It was closed when major renovation got under way on the landmark church, which just celebrated its 175th anniversary.

"The state of the museum is in limbo," said the Rev. Tom Choo, parish administrator. "The facility cannot be used unless we have $1 million liability insurance." He said the interests of the parish must prevail and that there are other uses for the space.

"It has been a struggle," said the Rev. Herman Gomes, president of the Damien Museum board of directors. "The pastor wants to move it."

"Waikiki is the logical place for it. Damien doesn't belong just to Hawaii," Gomes said in an August interview. There was a security concern about the facility, he said. Visitors often drifted through the two rooms without a guide. A chalice and vestments used by Damien -- things that would have value as relics -- were in display cases, and a few years ago a small cross that belonged to the priest was stolen while the museum was open.

"It's terribly sad," said the Rev. Joseph Hendriks, who first created the museum in 1977 at St. Patrick Church. "It is best in Waikiki. Mostly tourists came to it, and it took two buses to get to Kaimuki." As pastor in Kalaupapa, Hendriks encounters at least 25 Damien fans a day, the few visitors who make the trip to the remote peninsula, which is now a National Historic Park.

The Sacred Hearts fathers and brothers might not get it, but the rector of Honolulu's Catholic cathedral is launching a marketing program to fulfill the Catholic tourist's need for a souvenir. The Rev. John Berger of Our Lady of Peace Cathedral will open a small museum and gift shop this month. He envisions selling calendars, greeting cards and postcards, rosaries, pens and magnets memorializing the 1843 cathedral where Damien was ordained in 1864. "We're on a shoestring but there is a demand," he said.

Damien Museum director Irene Letoto said "people keep writing and calling for access." For her the closing meant the end of a paid job. She indicated that there was contention about the museum budget long before it closed.

The questions are still hanging out there. Should St. Augustine parish support it -- or collect rent? Should the statewide Sacred Hearts province underwrite the costs? Should the museum be self-supporting? Bear in mind that all three levels, although autonomous operations, are under direction of members of the Sacred Hearts religious order.

Despite the dispute about finances, there was no admission fee to the museum, and Letoto believes that was best. "People who wanted to would make donations."

There's more to Damien's legacy than artifacts in a museum, said the Rev. Clyde Guerreiro, one of the Sacred Hearts congregation. "He took faith and made it very practical -- if you are going to preach the Gospel, then you build houses for the living and make coffins for the dead. Meanwhile he nurtured himself through his Eucharistic adoration and through silence."

Guerreiro described his experience as a Kauai pastor after Hurricane Iniki hit as an application of Damien's practical ministry. "What people needed most was plumbing and a place to save their possessions. We invented a portable toilet that operated with a garden hose. We brought in Matson containers" and fashioned storage spaces within for people rebuilding their homes.

Guerreiro recently led a spiritual retreat on topside Molokai that centered around Damien. It was a continuation of a healing ministry that he, an Episcopal priest and two medical doctors began nine years ago. There are "four magic bullets of healing: love, faith, forgiveness and gratitude. Each time, you find the thing that people want to hear about is forgiveness."

Plans for a future spiritual retreat center in Kalaupapa are being discussed by a Sacred Hearts committee. "A house of prayer or healing would preserve Damien's legacy there," said Guerreiro.

"You can't separate Damien from his religious order," said Guerreiro. "He just did it so much better than we did."