The Belgian saint Father Damian (or Damiaan in Dutch) lies buried in the crypt of a mediaeval chapel in Leuven. Born Jozef De Veuster, he travelled as a missionary to Hawaii in 1873 to work in a leper colony. Tragically, he caught the incurable disease and died on the island in 1889.
Damien was eventually declared a Catholic saint. In a poll, he was voted the greatest Belgian of all time. There is a statue in Tremelo, his home town, and a copy in Washington’s Capitol building, of all places. He was selected for this honour by the state of Hawaii, when it was asked to nominate a figure.
His reputation took a knock recently when the Democrat representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticised him as representing ‘patriarchy and white supremacist culture.’ But the Damien expert Ruben Boon defended the priest who was, he argued, ‘much more Hawaiian than Belgian, white or whatever.’
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
