ハワイ旅行･ホテル･ショッピング･グルメ･求人

Pope Benedict XVI cleared the way for Father Damien to be declared a saint today. At the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the pope pope approved of a miracle of intercession of a Honolulu woman who claimed that praying to Father Damien cured her of her cancer. The approval means that Father Damien, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995, will be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church.

Born in 1840, Father Damien came to Hawaii in 1864 from Belgium and joined missionaries of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Nine years later he began ministering to leprosy patients on the remote Kalaupapa peninsula of Molokai, where about 8,000 people had been banished due to a leprosy epidemic in Hawaii. Father Damien eventually contracted the disease and died there in 1889.

The making of a saint in the Catholic Church takes several steps. The procedure requires that a miracle attributed to the candidate's intercession and that it must be confirmed in order for the candidate to be beatified. After beautification, a second miracle is needed for sainthood. Father Damien's body was disinterred from his burial place in Molokai and sent back to his native Belgium, but a relic was given back to the Molokai church in 1995 where it now rests. A date has not yet been set by the church for the formal recognition of his sainthood.