Saint Damien, Pray for Us

Anyone who grew up Catholic in the 1950's and 1960's - especially if they went to parochial school - was surrounded by the gruesome - stories and iconography. 

Saint Lucy, the virgin martyr whose eyes were gouged out. Saint Joan of Arc, burned at the stake. Saint Isaac Jogues, his fingers gnawed to the bone in the process of his martyrdom.

Every classroom - and every Catholic home - had a crucifix on the wall. (In my home, make that every bedroom.) Protestants used the cross (a plain cross) as a symbol of Christ's death. Catholics went the whole way, showing the body of Christ on the cross, replete with gouged side, spike wounds, and blood streaming down his face from the crown of thorn.

No opportunity was ever missed to focus on things that were violent, or, if not violent, non-violent ghastly. 

We venerated Saint Dominic Savio, who led a life of great piety before he died (pleurisy) at the age of 14. Don Bosco, the priest who had special affection for Dominic - let's not go there - and who mentored him along the journey, claiming that from the time he was six years old, little Dom had focused his life on becoming a saint, wrote about this saintly child's life. Somehow, this led to Dominic Savio's canonization in 1954. Just in time to set up the Dominic Savio Club that everyone in my school was a member of, whether we wanted to or not. 

We all considered Saint Dominic Savio to be something of an unbelievably priggish little prig, but the monthly meetings were a break from the routine, and I liked the theme song we sang to him. 

Saint Maria Goretti beat Dominic Savio to the sainthood punch by a few years. She was another one held up to us as an example, but her story was PG-13 and wasn't introduced to us until seventh or eighth grade. Maria Goretti was an 11- year-old girl who, in 1902, was sexually assaulted and murdered by a psycho. She resisted rape, and somehow she was fast-tracked to sainthood. She was canonized in 1950. (Her murderer died in 1970, so Maria Goretti seemed almost contemporary.)

Although he wasn't a saint at the time, Father Damien of Molokai was someone that the nuns loved to talk about. Father Damien was a missionary who worked in a leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, 

Now, if there's one thing that the nuns liked almost as much as talking about Saint Isaac Jogues' gnawed fingers, it was the horrors of leprosy. 

Leprosy is, of course, a horror, and the nuns liked nothing better than yammering on about how saintly Father Damien was to labor among those whose noses and fingers were falling off, etc. I was an avid reader of Vision Books, a monthly series of books for Catholic kids that my family subscribed to. Father Damien and the Bells wasn't my favorite of the series. That would be a tossup between More Champions in Sports and Spirit, which had a chapter on Herb Score, a Catholic baseball pitcher whose career was ended when he was hit in the eye with a line drive, and Lydia Longley: First American Nun, about a young Massachusetts Puritan girl who was kidnapped by Indians and taken to Canada, where she became a Catholic and a nun. But I liked the Father Damien story just fine. 

And most of what I know about leprosy - that there's no denying that it's a dreadful scourge - comes from that book and the nuns' rants. That and the scene in the movie Ben Hur, when we see Ben Hur's mother and sister exiled to live in a cave outside of town because they'd contracted leprosy. Oh, and I knew that armadillos can carry the leprosy-causing bacteria. 

Leprosy is relatively rare, and mostly occurs in the poorer regions of Asia and Africa. It's also curable. Thank you, antibiotics! 

But it does still exist, and it does still exist in the United States. Especially in Florida. 

In 2020, the Sunshine State was among the states with the highest number of leprosy cases, contributing to evidence that the infection is becoming endemic in the southeastern region of the country, according to a journal published in an August edition from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Central Florida seems to be the focus of the rise in cases, with researchers pointing out that 81% of leprosy cases in Florida between 2002 and 2021 came from the area. Nationally, Central Florida accounted for almost one-fifth of cases. (Source: Raw Story)

We're not talking about a lot of cases - 263 over the past two decades, and 15 so far this year.  Most of the cases were acquired elsewhere, but some were homegrown. Despite the small number of instances: 

Because of the increase in cases, health officials across the country should consider whether a person traveled to Florida when examining potential leprosy cases, according to the report.

Wonder whether Ron DeSantis is a carrier?

Meanwhile, Saint Damien (Sainthood Class of 2009) pray for us.