The Death of Father Damien.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5012, 21 May 1889, Page 3

The Death of Father Damien.

Dr Bake well sends the Auckland JLerald the following interesting communication, •which we gladly publish as a tribute to tho memory of a good man : The death of Father Damien, who has given up his life to tho poor lepers of the Sandwich Islands, deserves romething more than a passing notice. Father Damien was one of those rare men whose virtues, in this ago of materialism, selfishness, and worship of money, serve to show, us to what lofty heights of self-sacrifice a human being can attain when actuated by the religious spirit. r ihoso who have never seen leprosy, and never lived in countries where it is common, can hardly form ap aoiiifate idea of l}ie disgust apd repugnance with which t]ie disease ip viewed by those who are in constant danger of being themselves infected by it. Havjpg had charge of a leper asylum in the West

Indies, and having for "some "years devoted myself to the study of leprosy, I may be allowed to speak with some authority on this point. The slightest touch from a leper is dreaded, and when they were allowed to go out to bog, as they were once a week in one place I visited, the alms that are given to them are thrown to them as if they were dogs and all personal contact is shunned with horror. For a man, therefore, to go and live amongst them, daily and hourly associating with them, and ministering to them, as Father Damien did, is an act of heroic virtue. The admration excited by his life has for once lifted men above the region of petty bigotries, and, although a Homan Catholic priest Father Damien found his warmest and most energetic friend in an Anglican clergyman.