Robert Louis Stevenson defends Fr. Damien

Responding to a derogatory letter written by a Protestant minister after Father Damien’s death, author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

“Your Church and Damien’s were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set divine examples. You having (in one huge instance) failed, and Damien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that you were doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in that high rivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your well-being, in your pleasant room — and Damien, crowned with glories and horrors, toiled and rotted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs of Kalawao —you, the elect who would not, were the last man on earth to collect and propagate gossip on the volunteer who would and did.”

“But sir, when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succors the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honor — the battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost forever…”