COURTESY THE CATHOLIC HERALD Kalaupapa resident Kuulei Bell presented a lei and a kiss to Pope John Paul II during a Mass for the beatification of Father Damien in Brussels in 1995.

Kalaupapa patients
have special sadness

Settlement residents reflect
on a pope whom many
had met and admired

Word of Pope John Paul II's death spread quickly through the small Molokai settlement of Kalaupapa, where nearly half of the 40 residents have met the man who led the Catholic Church over the last quarter-century.

"Everybody was saddened," said Kuulei Bell, a Mormon who, along with most, if not all of the residents, will attend this morning's Catholic services at St. Francis Church. She said the mood in Kalaupapa dampened almost immediately after the pope's death was confirmed yesterday morning.

"Because I saw him (in Brussels), I had some kind of personal feeling," she said. "For me, it was a special sadness."

That very personal grief of the pope's death has hit many in Kalaupapa, whose residents have had several encounters with the pontiff over the years as they've pushed forward two decades-long sainthood causes -- one for Father Damien DeVeuster and the other for Mother Marianne Cope.

Both have been recognized for their work with leprosy patients, who were banished to the remote Molokai peninsula after the disease became an epidemic in the islands.

About a dozen Kalaupapa residents, including Bell, made the 7,300-mile trip to attend Damien's beatification, during which the pope designated the father as "blessed," in Brussels a decade ago.

The Kalaupapa postmaster presented the pope with a 54-inch wili lei of lehua blossoms and kukui tree leaves at the Damien ceremony, which Bell attended as president of the Kalaupapa Residents Advisory Committee.

Before the event, she said, she had been instructed to give the lei to an aide.

But when the pope put out his hand, she kissed his ring "because I thought that was the thing to do."

She then gave him the lei, along with a long embrace.

"There was something radiant about him," she said. "He was a gentle man."

ASSOCIATED PRESS Worshippers reacted after hearing about the death of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican yesterday.

Richard Marks, a long-time Kalaupapa resident and tour guide, had two private audiences with the pope in the early 1980s to present Cope's biography and introduce her sainthood cause.

Marks also traveled to Brussels in 1995 for Damien's beatification.

"You got the feeling he was talking to every individual personally," Marks said, with a quiet sigh.

"He seemed to come across without any fancy words or anything else."

Away from Molokai in person, but not spirit, Bernard Punikaia remembered yesterday how the whole of the Kalaupapa delegation to the Damien ceremony was taken aback "by the power of the pope."

"He was the people's pope. He was our pope," said Punikaia, who now lives at Leahi Hospital in Honolulu.

"All of us responded to his greatness. He was there for all of us."

Memories of the beatification moved Mele Watanuki to tears yesterday.

"I loved him so much," Watanuki said yesterday, after returning home from a morning prayer mass for the pope, which was held before he died. "He always treated people the same. He treated people equally."

Watanuki, who still uses a rosary given to her by the pope, said when she knelt down before the pope that day in June, he asked her if she had come from Kalaupapa.

"I said, 'Yes, pope.'"

Then, he asked her if she was a leprosy patient.

"Yes, pope," she replied again, before adding, "Pope, please pray for all Kalaupapa patients."