The 12,000-mile trek to Rome for Father Damien’s canonization won’t be easy for the 11 Hansen’s disease patients making the journey.

The two youngest are 68 and the oldest 84.
Most have mobility problems that make travel a hassle.
But they’re determined to attend Damien’s canonization, something many of them have been waiting a lifetime to see.
“For me, it’s honoring the man who gave to the people at that time his all, the most delicate gift being his life,” said Elroy Makia Malo, a 74-year-old Hansen’s disease patient.
Malo, who is in a wheelchair and is blind, said he couldn’t have made the journey without help from a caregiver.
All the patients on the trip have their own aide to help them with documents and medications, push their wheelchairs or offer other assistance.
The patients, most of whom still live in Kalaupapa, Molokai, left Honolulu yesterday and will arrive in Belgium tomorrow, as part of a pilgrimage with Honolulu Diocese Bishop Larry Silva and more than 300 Hawaii residents.
The group will visit Damien’s birthplace in Tremelo and his tomb in Louvain before heading to Rome to attend Damien’s canonization on Oct. 11. Pope Benedict XVI will elevate Damien and four others to sainthood in a two-hour ceremony in St. Peter’s Square.
As they waited at Newark (N.J.) International Airport today during a long layover before heading to Belgium, the patients, their caregivers and others on the pilgrimage gathered in a room, talking story, playing harmonica and singing.
Father Damien, born Joseph de Veuster in Belgium in 1840, arrived in Kalaupapa in 1873. He was 33, and would spend 16 years at the settlement, ministering to Hansen’s disease patients who were wrenched from their families to live there after being diagnosed.
Damien died in 1889 of the disease.
For more on this story, see tomorrow’s Honolulu Advertiser.