On 10 May 1873 a Belgian priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts stepped ashore at Kalawao and asked his bishop to let him remain there. Father Damien de Veuster was thirty-three. Kalawao lay on a flat green peninsula thrust out from the north coast of Molokaʻi, closed off from the rest of the island by a wall of cliffs rising nearly two thousand feet and open ocean on its other three sides — which is why the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi had chosen it, eight years earlier, as the place to send people diagnosed with leprosy.
The geography did the work of walls. Boats could land only in fair weather, fresh water came down from the Waikolu and Waihanau valleys, and the pali behind allowed no road. Native Hawaiians had lived on the peninsula for more than nine hundred years before the government bought the land and moved them off it. Between 1866 and 1969, under an act of forced segregation, more than eight thousand people were carried here.
A pilgrim to Kalaupapa walks two small clusters about 3.9 km apart. Kalawao, on the windward east side, holds St. Philomena Church — the chapel Damien enlarged twice — and the churchyard grave where he was buried in 1889. The Kalaupapa settlement, on the leeward west side, holds St. Francis Church, the Bishop Home that Mother Marianne Cope ran for thirty years, and a roadside monument. Both saints' principal remains lie elsewhere, in Leuven and in Honolulu. Molokaʻi keeps the ground they worked and the graves they were first laid in.
📜 History & Spiritual Significance
In 1865 the Legislative Assembly of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi passed, and King Kamehameha V approved, "An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy," which set apart land for the isolation of anyone believed capable of spreading the disease. On 6 January 1866 nine men and three women were landed at the mouth of Waikolu Valley, the nearest accessible point to Kalawao; by October of that year 101 men and 41 women had been delivered. The National Park Service describes it as the first Hansen's disease colony in American history.
Jozef De Veuster was born at Tremelo, Belgium, on 3 January 1840. He entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary at the beginning of 1859 and took the name Damien. His brother Pamphile had been assigned to the Hawaiian mission and fell ill; Damien took his place, landing at Honolulu on 19 March 1864 and being ordained in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on 21 May. When four priests volunteered to serve the settlement in rotation, Damien went first, in 1873, and did not leave.
With the patients as his workforce he built houses and a water system, planted trees, organized schools, bands and choirs, dressed ulcers, made coffins and dug graves. He enlarged St. Philomena Church twice around the chapel the patients had put up in 1872. He pressed the Hawaiian government and his own church for supplies, and the pressing reached newspapers in Europe and America, which is how most of the world first heard of Kalawao. He shared food and pipes with the people he served and bandaged their sores without washing afterwards; his own illness was announced around 1884–1885. He died on 15 April 1889, aged 49, with Mother Marianne at his bedside, and was buried beside his church under the pandanus tree where he had slept his first night on the peninsula.
Barbara Koob was born at Heppenheim in the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt on 23 January 1838; her family emigrated to Utica, New York, two years later. She entered the Sisters of St. Francis at Syracuse, took the name Marianne, and by 1883 was supervising St. Joseph's Hospital there. A request for help came from Hawaiʻi that June, and in November 1883 she reached Honolulu with six other sisters, took charge of the Kakaʻako Branch Hospital and founded the Kapiʻolani Home for the daughters of patients. In November 1888 she came to Kalaupapa with Sister Leopoldina Burns and Sister Vincentia McCormick to run the Bishop Home, a house for girls and single women endowed by the Honolulu banker Charles Bishop, and she managed the boys' home at Kalawao until 1895. She was an administrator, a nurse and a pharmacist, and she governed her houses on the principle that the people in them keep their own dignity. She never returned to Syracuse. She died at Kalaupapa on 9 August 1918, aged 80, after thirty years among patients and without contracting the disease, and was buried on the Bishop Home grounds.
The segregation laws were abolished in 1969. The surviving patients were free to leave, and most chose to remain; the peninsula is a residential community, and the restrictions on visiting exist to protect the privacy of the people who live there. Kalaupapa was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and established as a National Historical Park in 1980.
Damien was beatified at Brussels on 4 June 1995 by Pope John Paul II and canonized at Rome on 11 October 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI. Marianne was beatified on 14 May 2005 and canonized on 21 October 2012, both by Benedict XVI. Their relics are divided across three countries. Damien's body was exhumed in 1936 at the request of the Belgian government and taken to the crypt of the Congregation's church at Leuven, where his principal tomb is; a relic of his right hand was returned to the Kalawao grave in 1995, and a first-class relic was placed in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu after his canonization. Marianne's remains were exhumed in 2005 and taken to her motherhouse in Syracuse, then brought back to Hawaiʻi and enshrined in that same Honolulu cathedral on 31 July 2014.
☩ Pilgrimage Sites in Kalaupapa
St. Philomena Catholic Church
The patients built a small chapel at Kalawao in 1872, the year before Damien arrived; he enlarged the church twice around it, and the original structure sits inside the later nave. The survey made of the building for the Historic American Buildings Survey records a separate patients' entrance on the north side, a wing of pews reserved for the patients with holes cut through its floor, and a coin drop in the vestibule wired to ring a bell. The church stands on the windward shore under the cliffs, within Kalaupapa National Historical Park.
Father Damien's Grave
Damien was buried in the churchyard beside St. Philomena in 1889. His body was exhumed in 1936 and carried to Leuven, and the grave stood empty for nearly sixty years; in 1995 a relic composed of the remains of his right hand was returned to Molokaʻi and interred in the original resting place. The grave is a few paces from the church door.
St. Francis Catholic Church
The working parish church of the Kalaupapa settlement, the one of these five sites where Mass belongs to ordinary life. Damien built the first chapel on this site in 1873; it burned in 1906 after coals spilled from a censer, and the present wooden church was rebuilt in 1908. Priests of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts serve it, and a stained-glass window beside the altar carries a dedication to Father Damien.
Bishop Home and St. Marianne Cope's Grave
A compound of buildings — main house, chapel, convent, infirmary, cottages, dining room, dormitory, laundry — in the middle of the settlement, where Mother Marianne housed girls and single women from 1888 until her death thirty years later. She asked to be buried on the grounds and was. Her remains were exhumed in 2005 and are now enshrined in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace at Honolulu, so a pilgrim here stands at a gravesite rather than a tomb. The Sisters of St. Francis live on the property.
Father Damien Monument
A commemorative monument to St. Damien beside the settlement road, set among rocks painted by the patient-artist Ed Kato. It marks his care for the people exiled here until his own death from the disease.
🕯️ Annual Feast Days & Celebrations
Feast of St. Damien of Molokai — May 10
The principal pilgrimage day, and an Optional Memorial in the proper calendar for the dioceses of the United States. The date is not the day Damien died but the day he arrived at Kalawao in 1873, assigned by a concession from Rome so that the feast falls on his coming among the patients. Mass is offered at St. Philomena, the church he built. The Diocese of Honolulu keeps the day at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, where a first-class relic is enshrined, and at the statue of St. Damien in front of the Hawaiʻi State Capitol, where Catholic schoolchildren bring flowers, sing and dance the hula. Because the peninsula is permit-controlled, observances at Kalaupapa itself are small.
Feast of St. Marianne Cope — January 23
An Optional Memorial in the same calendar, kept on the date of her birth. The principal diocesan Mass is celebrated in Honolulu, where her remains rest. The sisters and the resident community keep their own observance on the peninsula at St. Francis Church, on a day near the feast chosen to suit access and the community rather than on a fixed date, followed by a walk of the Kalaupapa and Kalawao grounds.
🛏️ Where to Stay
There is no visitor accommodation on the Kalaupapa peninsula, and day visitors leave the same day. A pilgrim bases in or near Kaunakakai, Molokaʻi's one town on the south shore, roughly 16 km by road from the trailhead at Palaʻau State Park.
Hotel Molokaʻi ⭐⭐⭐ — The island's only full-service hotel: a low-rise village of Polynesian-style bungalows on Kamiloloa Beach at the eastern edge of Kaunakakai, with an oceanfront pool and a restaurant on site. Many rooms have kitchenettes. Website
Ka Hale Mala Bed and Breakfast (B&B) — A self-contained ground-floor suite in a private home about four miles east of Kaunakakai, across the road from a swimmable stretch of the barrier reef, with breakfast from the host's orchard and garden. Rooms are arranged directly with the host; there is no online booking. Website
Molokai Shores (apartment) — A beachfront condominium resort on four oceanfront acres in Kaunakakai, with individually owned one- and two-bedroom units rented out furnished with full kitchens and lanai. Suited to families or a longer stay. Reserve this hotel
🚗 Getting There
Access to Kalaupapa is controlled under Hawaiʻi state law. Every visitor needs a permit, and permits are issued through park-authorized tours; there is no way to arrive unannounced. The National Park Service opened a limited public tour program in July 2026 and suspended it within days while it reassessed visitor access, so the terms on which a pilgrim may come are subject to change — the park is the only reliable source on what is possible in a given season.
By Air: Molokaʻi's main airport is Molokai Airport (MKK) at Hoʻolehua, served by inter-island flights from Honolulu (HNL) on Oʻahu and Kahului (OGG) on Maui. The peninsula has its own airstrip, Kalaupapa Airport (LUP), about 15 km from Hoʻolehua — a flight of a quarter of an hour.
By Sea: No scheduled passenger ferry connects Molokaʻi to the other islands; the island is reached by air.
By Car: No road descends the pali, and no vehicle reaches Kalaupapa from the rest of Molokaʻi. From Kaunakakai, Highway 460 and then Highway 470 climb to Palaʻau State Park, about 16 km, where the trail begins.
On Foot: The Kalaupapa Pali Trail drops roughly 3.5 miles from Palaʻau to the peninsula in 26 switchbacks. Walkers cross private land between Kalae Highway and the trailhead. A permit is required for the trail as it is for the flight.
📚 Further Reading
Books:
Gavan Daws. Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai — The standard scholarly biography of Damien de Veuster, from the University of Hawaii Press.
Mary Laurence Hanley and O. A. Bushnell. Pilgrimage & Exile: Mother Marianne of Molokaʻi — The standard life of St. Marianne Cope, co-authored by a Franciscan sister, covering her thirty years on the peninsula.
John Tayman. The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai — A secular documentary history of the settlement itself, from the 1865 exile law to the end of segregation, told from the patients' side.
Online Resources:
Kalaupapa National Historical Park: History & Culture — The park's own account of the settlement, its people, and the two saints.
Canonization of Damien de Veuster — Vatican biography — The Holy See's biographical note issued for the 2009 canonization.
🎥 Recommended Videos
Sacred Pilgrimage to Kalaupapa Molokai Hawaii — A short filmed pilgrimage to the peninsula and its churches.
Kalaupapa - A Story to Tell — A documentary on the settlement's history from a United States federal agency channel.
St. Damien of Molokai HD — A short life of the saint from Catholic Online.
🔗 Useful Links
Kalaupapa National Historical Park — The National Park Service site for the peninsula, and the authority on what access is open.
Permits and Reservations — The park's page on the state permit every visitor needs.
Saint Damien of Molokai Church & Parish — The Molokaʻi parish that serves St. Philomena and St. Francis.
Diocese of Honolulu — The diocese covering the Hawaiian Islands.
🧭 Nearby Pilgrimage Destinations
Kalaupapa has no pilgrimage neighbours within reach — the peninsula was chosen for its isolation, and the isolation held. The nearest guide on this site is more than 3,700 km away across the Pacific.
Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, Honolulu (92 km) — The cathedral church of the Diocese of Honolulu, where Damien was ordained in 1864. St. Marianne Cope's remains and a first-class relic of St. Damien are enshrined there, which makes it the one companion visit a Kalaupapa pilgrimage genuinely asks for.
🪶 Closing Reflection
"He felt at home with them. The servant of the Word consequently became a suffering servant, a leper with the lepers, for the last four years of his life."
— Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for the Canonization of Damien de Veuster, 11 October 2009
