Historic Day at Father Damien Way

Posted

The stretch of East 33rd Street between First and Second avenues in Manhattan has been co-named “Father Damien Way” in honor of the Belgian priest born Jozef De Veuster in 1840.

He entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Leuven, took the name Damien and departed for Hawaii as a missionary in 1864.

He then dedicated his life to those afflicted with Hansen’s disease, then known as leprosy, on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i. He succumbed to the disease in 1889 and was canonized in 2009.

Cardinal Dolan and Geert Bourgeois, minister-president of Flanders, Belgium, celebrated the street co-naming and unveiling at a ceremony on the corner of Second Avenue and 33rd Street near the Chapel of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary May 11.

Cardinal Dolan led a prayer service at the chapel after the street naming, which included Archbishop Bernardito Auza, apostolic nuncio to the United Nations, and Father Robert J. Robbins, administrator of the chapel.

Located near the chapel is the New York Regional Hansen’s Disease Center at Bellevue Hospital. The chapel shares the name of the saint’s religious order and serves as a meditation place for local hospitals, which makes the stretch of street a fitting place in his honor and memory.