Molokai: The Story of Father Damien | |
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Directed by | Paul Cox |
Starring | David Wenham Kate Ceberano Derek Jacobi Sam Neill Kris Kristofferson Tom Wilkinson Peter O'Toole |
Music by | Paul Grabowsky Wim Mertens |
Release date |
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Running time | 122 minutes |
Countries | Belgium Australia |
Language | English |
Molokai: The Story of Father Damien is a 1999 biographical film of Father Damien, a Belgian priest working at the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. It was directed by Paul Cox. [1]
With the coming of more immigrants from Asia, cases of leprosy began to appear around the Hawaiian islands in the late 19th century. As it spreads, a colony for the isolation and care of lepers was established on the isolated Kalaupapa peninsula on the northern side of the island of Molokai. The Hawaiian government, with support from the Catholic and other churches sent almost all lepers to the colony. The Catholic Bishop who is in charge of the place feels a need to send some priests there to administer last rites to people shortly before their deaths. Fr. Damien volunteers and is sent to the island with the caution from the Bishop that he shall not touch any of the patients. Fr. Damien is welcomed at the island by Rudolph Meyer, a man who is a Lutheran who takes care of the provisions sent by the government to the island. The Lutheran points to a mountain and tells him that whoever tries to go beyond it is shot dead to prevent the spread of the disease. On his arrival Damien finds that the little chapel in the island has not been properly taken care of and is ruined. He restores the chapel. With God as his sole help, he starts his work at Molokai. A boy who comes to the chapel volunteers to become the altar boy. The boy is the first person Fr. Damien touches. Near to the chapel Father meets a Protestant Englishman turned a patient who was once a medical assistant in Honolulu (a city in another island). He finds it very difficult to adjust with the church but Fr. Damien's presence is some consolation to him. (He later dies and is buried in the Catholic cemetery). The Bishop who is so considerate relates with Damien's provincial that there is a report about the Father, describing him as 'The Christian Hero' by the prime minister.
Soon a doctor arrives who belongs to Congregational Church and communicates to him that there is a Chinese medicine named Hoang Nan which might be of some help to the patients. The Father with the help of the doctor gives the medicine to some of the patients. During that, Damien informs the doctor about the pathetic conditions of the patients including the sad fate of those who await death in a settlement, only to be replaced by others like them if they are to be found dead on the following day.
Father Damien also relates to him about the stealing and robbery and some of the immoral activities go on there because of their desperate lot who have nothing else to do other than to await their death. A woman friend among others named Malulani is a great help to Fr. Damien although she has romantic feelings toward him which he admonishes. Later the letters Damien sent to his brother become news in the papers and this troubles the authority, especially the prime minister. Father Damien continues his work among the lepers, despite the difficulties with lack of provisions and insufficient funds. When he finds his letters serve no purpose, he pays a visit to the authority which also brings no significant change. The Bishop, who, after finding no one to attend Father Damien's confession, decides to go there himself. However, he is only allowed to give the absolution on board the ship while Father Damien stays on a boat. Damien has gradually developed symptoms of the disease because of his closer caring for the patients.
The doctor leaves Damien as he finds the situation unbearable, and also because he wants to get married. But the doctor's absence is maintained by Brother Joseph Dutton whom Prof. Clifford sent there. One day the crown princess of Hawaii pays a visit promising help to the suffering. The government is however still reluctant to help Damien the way he needs. Once when the weather is not so calm the captain of a ship with lepers orders his crew to toss them to the sea. Father Damien tries desperately to save a few. Meanwhile, his disease develops to worse states and he is still not offered much help. However, a new priest arrives at Molokai to assist him later followed by nuns. Soon the desperate Father succumbs to death with a hope of joining his fellow members in heaven.
Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai or Saint Damien De Veuster, born Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious institute. He was recognized for his ministry, which he led from 1873 until his death in 1889, in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi to people with leprosy, who lived in government-mandated medical quarantine in a settlement on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokaʻi.
Molokai is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles at its greatest length and width with a usable land area of 260 sq mi (673.40 km2), making it the fifth-largest in size of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th largest island in the United States. It lies southeast of Oʻahu across the 25 mi (40 km) wide Kaʻiwi Channel and north of Lānaʻi, separated from it by the Kalohi Channel.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese for the state of Hawaii in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Gulstan Ropert, SS.CC., of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary served as the third vicar apostolic of the Apostolic Vicariate of the Hawaiian Islands - now the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu, from 1892 to 1903.
Marianne Cope, OSF, was a German-born American religious sister who was a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of Syracuse, New York, and founding leader of its St. Joseph's Hospital in the city, among the first of 50 general hospitals in the country. Known also for her charitable works, in 1883 she relocated with six other sisters to Hawaiʻi to care for persons suffering leprosy on the island of Molokaʻi and aid in developing the medical infrastructure in Hawaiʻi. Despite direct contact with the patients over many years, Cope did not contract the disease.
Kalaupapa is a small unincorporated community and Hawaiian home land on the island of Molokaʻi, within Kalawao County in the U.S. state of Hawaii. In 1866, during the reign of Kamehameha V, the Hawaii legislature passed a law that resulted in the designation of Molokaʻi as the site for a leper colony, where patients who were seriously affected by leprosy could be quarantined, to prevent them from infecting others. At the time, the disease was little understood: it was believed to be highly contagious and was incurable until the advent of antibiotics. The communities where people with leprosy lived were under the administration of the Board of Health, which appointed superintendents on the island.
Kalaupapa National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park located in Kalaupapa, Hawaiʻi, on the island of Molokaʻi. Coterminous with the boundaries of Kalawao County and primarily on Kalaupapa peninsula, it was established by Congress in 1980 to expand upon the earlier National Historic Landmark site of the Kalaupapa Leper Settlement. It is administered by the National Park Service. Its goal is to preserve the cultural and physical settings of the two leper colonies on the island of Molokaʻi, which operated from 1866 to 1969 and had a total of 8500 residents over the decades.
Jonatana Napela or Jonathan Hawaii Napela was one of the earliest Hawaiian converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hawaii, joining in 1851. He helped translate the Book of Mormon into the Hawaiian language, as "Ka Buke a Moramona," working with missionary George Q. Cannon. Napela was appointed to serve as a superintendent of the colony at Kalaupapa, Molokaʻi, which he did for several years. He had accompanied his wife there after her diagnosis with leprosy. While at the settlement, he led LDS Church members and collaborated with Roman Catholic priest-missionary, Father Damien, to serve all the people of the settlement, most of which were Protestant.
Kalawao is a location on the eastern side of the Kalaupapa Peninsula of the island of Molokai, in Hawaii, which was the site of Hawaii's leper colony between 1866 and the early 20th century. Thousands of people in total came to the island to live in quarantine. It was one of two such settlements on Molokai, the other being Kalaupapa. Administratively Kalawao is part of Kalawao County. The placename means "mountain-side wild woods" in Hawaiian.
John M. Systermans was born Jean-Marie Systermans, but was better known as Father Henry Systermans or Pater Henri Systermans. He was a 20th-century Belgian-born missionary and priest with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He served for most of his life in Hawaii most notably during the 1950s at the leper colony at Kalaupapa on Molokai. His service there followed in the tradition of fellow Belgian priest, Saint Damien, and his contributions were part of the research gathered by Gavan Daws for the definitive biography Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai.
Masanao Goto was a Japanese leprologist. He was the son of first Shobun Gotō and was called the "second Shobun Gotō". He devoted his life to leprosy patients in Japan and on the island of Molokai in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Leprosy stigma is a type of social stigma, a strong negative feeling towards a person with leprosy relating to their moral status in society. It is also referred to as leprosy-related stigma, leprostigma, and stigma of leprosy. Since ancient times, leprosy instilled the practice of fear and avoidance in many societies because of the associated physical disfigurement and lack of understanding behind its cause. Because of the historical trauma the word "leprosy" invokes, the disease is now referred to as Hansen's disease, named after Gerhard Armauer Hansen who discovered Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterial agent that causes Hansen's disease. Those who have suffered from Hansen's disease describe the impact of social stigma as far worse than the physical manifestations despite it being only mildly contagious and pharmacologically curable. This sentiment is echoed by Weis and Ramakrishna, who noted that "the impact of the meaning of the disease may be a greater source of suffering than symptoms of the disease".
Joseph Dutton was a Civil War veteran and Union Army lieutenant, who converted to Catholicism and later worked as a missionary with Father Damien.
William Keolaloa Kahānui Sumner, Jr. was a high chief of the Kingdom of Hawaii through his mother's family; his father was an English captain from Northampton. Sumner married a Tahitian princess. Aided by royal family connections, he became a major landowner and politician in Hawaii.
William Phileppus Ragsdale was a Hawaiian lawyer, newspaper editor, and translator. He was a popular figure known for being luna or superintendent of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement. Elements of his life story influenced Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
George Naʻea, was a high chief of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and father of Queen Emma of Hawaii. He became one of the first Native Hawaiians to contract leprosy and the disease became known as maʻi aliʻi in the Hawaiian language because of this association.
Ambrose Kanoealiʻi or Ambrose Kanewaliʻi Hutchison was a long-time Native Hawaiian resident of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement on the island of Molokaʻi who resided there for fifty-three years from 1879 to his death in 1932. During his residence, he assumed a prominent leadership role in the patient community and served as luna or resident superintendent of Kalaupapa from 1884 to 1897.
Mary Leopoldina Burns, was an American religious sister who was a member of the Sisters of St Francis of Syracuse, New York, and a close companion and biographer of Marianne Cope during the 1883 Hansen's Disease epidemic on the island of Molokaʻi, Hawaii.
Kapoli Kamakau, sometimes referred to as Lizzie Kapoli Kamakau, was a Hawaiian composer and musician who lived during the Hawaiian Kingdom. A close associate and friend of members of the Hawaiian royal family, she served as protège and lady-in-waiting to the future Queen Liliʻuokalani. She was a member of the singing club organized by Liliʻuokalani and her sister Likelike, and wrote music compositions with the two royal sisters. In 1888, she contracted leprosy and was exiled to the leper colony of Kalaupapa. At the settlement, she is thought to have taught singing lessons to the female patients. She died in 1891 after Queen Liliʻuokalani's visit to Kalaupapa as part of her tours of the islands.