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PHL CONSULATE GENERAL IN HONOLULU REACHES OUT TO FILIPINO COMMUNITY IN MOLOKA’I ISLAND, VISITS FORMER KALAUPAPA SETTLEMENT OF THE LEPER PRIEST

01 December 2014 – Philippine Consul General Gina Jamoralin visited the Molokai Island, the 5^th largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago from November 19 to 21 and met with the Filipino community who warmly welcomed the Philippine Consulate General officials. Moloka’i has a population of about 7,345 as of 2010 where about a quarter of the population are Filipinos,  mostly descendants of the first generation Filipino “sakadas” who arrived in Hawaii in the postwar period.  Molokai is located in Maui County, the latter encompassing  Maui, Lana’i, Kaho’olawe and Moloka’i. The last visit of a Philippine Consul General in Moloka’I was in 2010.

Consul General Jamoralin also visited the isolated Kalaupapa Peninsula, the site of the former Kalaupapa leper colony where a Belgian priest, Father Damien de Veuster of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus, cared for the leper patients for sixteen years until the priest himself contracted  the disease and died in Kalaupapa in 1889. Fr. Damien was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 2009 for his selfless care of the lepers of Kalaupapa. The remote peninsula can be reached by air, donkey, or by foot.

The trip on foot to Kalaupapa took almost six hours through a mountain trail which showed how isolated the former leper settlement was and how long the missionaries took, including Fr. Damien, to trek between Molokai town proper and Kalaupapa during their time. The Consul General also visited the famous St. Filomena church where Fr. Damien used to hold mass for the lepers and the Saint’s  gravesite, and that of  Mother Marianne Cope of the Sisters of Saint Francis, missionary nun who worked in Kalaupapa settlement, and who was also canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. For his selfless care of the lepers of Kalaupapa, St. Damien is also known as “the leper priest”  or the “Saint for the Lepers”.