The Priest Who Chose the Colony

In 1873, a thirty-three-year-old Belgian priest named Damien de Veuster stepped off a cargo ship onto the rocky shore of Kalaupapa, a leper colony on the island of Molokai. The Hawaiian government had banished over eight hundred people there — men, women, and children with Hansen's disease — and left them to fend for themselves. No physician would stay. No official would visit.…