On October 11 Pope Benedict will canonize Damien de Veuster, the Belgian priest who spent most of his life serving poor lepers on the island of Molokai in Hawaii. I've been reading a short biography of the courageous priest who single-handedly transformed a "hell on earth" into a Catholic community of love. He personally built coffins and dug graves for the dead and put a fence around the cemetery to protect the graves from marauding dogs. He ministered to the sick: washed their bodies, bandaged their wounds, made their beds, cleaned their rooms. He built homes and a house for orphaned children. Those who were well enough helped build a road and a dock. He put the lepers first, both their physical and spiritual needs.Think about it, St. Damien, with all the needs of the leper colony, would have been ineligible for a funding grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. While he loved his flock and gave them dignity through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, he failed to "empower" them. He didn't start a Molokai Neighborhood Project to lobby the government, although he wasn't above harrassing the governor himself. He didn't start a Molokai Workers Center or a Disabilities Forum or a Legal Service for Lepers program. He served his people as a father serves his children or a shepherd cares for his flock. And in the end he shared everything with them including their disease.
As I research the grantees for the CCHD collection for 2009, I'm appalled at the amount of money going to pay salaries of community organizers while banning any money spent on direct services to the poor. It's high time the bishops stopped funding liberal organizations primarily focused on expanding socialism instead of saints like Damien who truly serve the poor. The best way to "empower" the poor is to strengthen their families. Pray for an end to the CCHD collection and for the installation of a pro-life collection. The bishops have talked the talk on pro-life for 35 years; they need to walk the walk by replacing the CCHD liberal lottery with a pro-life collection that gets at the real root of poverty, the destruction of the family.
Our world needs more saints like Fr. Damien and fewer community organizers like Barack Obama. Blessed Damien, soon to be St. Damien, pray for our poor sick country filled with spiritual leprosy. Intercede for our conversion through the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
I'm currently reading the book, "The Heart of Fr. Damien" and I am so amazed at what he did for the lepers in Hawaii. Certainly many non-catholics converted after meeting and reading about him and the sacrifices he made to serve God and help the lepers who were abandoned by the government with only $6.00 a year and shipped to Molokai where they had no doctor, etc. until Fr. Damien changed everything for the better. He helped them build homes, churches,and so much more. If any one deserves to be a saint, it is him.
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