Religion: We Lepers

Charnel chaos, forgotten by the outside world, was Hawaii’s leper settlement on Molokai Island when in 1873 a young Belgian named Father Damien (Joseph De Veuster) begged his bishop to send him there. Father Damien worked like a beaver to improve the place, made himself and it famous. One Sunday in 1885 he opened his sermon not with the customary “Brethren” but simply: “We lepers.”

Father Damien lived on with his afflicted flock until 1889. Three years before he died he was joined by “Brother Joseph” (Ira Barnes Dutton), a Vermont-born Civil War hero who had been converted and gone to Molokai because he wished to expiate youthful frivolities. In 44 years Brother Joseph left Molokai only once, to have his eyes treated in Honolulu. He died two years ago at 87, but not of leprosy (TIME, April 6, 1931). Last week the world had word of one of Brother Joseph’s successors. Father Peter d’Orgueval.

To Molokai eight years ago went Father d’Orgueval, 53, descendant of an aristocratic French family, scholar and orator, friend of the late Novelist Rene Bazin. A Wartime chaplain, much-decorated, he lost his voice from gassing, volunteered thereupon to work at Molokai for the Congregation of Picpus* which has charge of it. Within the past year Father d’Orgueval has been visited by Father Joseph A. Sweeney of the Maryknoll Fathers in Ossining, N. Y. Last week it was learned, by letter from Maryknoll Sisters in Honolulu, that Father d’Orgueval, too, may now begin his sermons, “We lepers.” There is little chance for his recovery. Father Sweeney felt sure that Father d’Orgueval exposed himself by moving freely among the lepers to make them feel less outcast. Father Sweeney set out last week to found in South China a leper colony to be maintained by U. S. Catholics.

* Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus & Mary, established in 1803 in the Rue Picpus in Paris.