Street in New York to be named after Father Damien
A piece of E 33rd Street in Manhattan is being redubbed Father Damien Way next month, in honour of the Tremelo-born priest who devoted his life to the care of people with leprosy
Bourgeois to inaugurate new street
Born in Tremelo, Flemish Brabant, in 1840, Father Damien is famous for having built a school, medical clinic and fully functioning communities out of the dilapidated infrastructure that was housing people suffering from leprosy. A peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i was home to hundreds with the disease in the 19th and into the 20th century. Father Damien died of leprosy on Moloka’i aged 49 and was canonised in 2009.
Flemish minister-president Geert Bourgeois will officially inaugurate Father Damien Way on 11 May, the day after St Damien’s feast day. The street name is an initiative of the Flemish government, in collaboration with the Archdiocese of New York and the New York City Council.
East 33rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue in the Murray Hill area of Manhattan is becoming Father Damien Way, which is located near three major hospitals. One of them is Bellevue Hospital Center, one of the few hospitals in the country’s east coast region that specialises in the treatment of leprosy.
Statues of Father Damien are already present at the US Capitol building in Washington DC and in front of Hawaii’s State Senate building in Honolulu. Tremelo, meanwhile, maintains a Damien Museum, and Leuven, where the priest is buried, runs the Damien documentation and information centre.
Photo: A painting of Father Damien in Hawaii by British painter Edward Clifford, 1888
