Father Damien and the Lepers of Molokai

In 1873, a young Belgian priest named Father Damien de Veuster stepped off a cargo ship onto the shores of Molokai, Hawaii—a remote peninsula where the government had banished everyone diagnosed with leprosy. No one went there voluntarily. The settlement had no law, no medical care, and no hope. The afflicted lived in open graves, waiting to die. Damien chose to stay.…