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GC017.JPG

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St. Joseph’s Church Molokai, Hawaii Prior to the establishment of landscaped garden cemeteries most people were buried in small family cemeteries or in churchyards. The burial grounds around churches were known as “God’s acre”. This picturesque church on the island of Molokai in Hawaii, was built in 1876 by Father Damien, who is memorialized with a life-size bronze statue outside the church. Father Damien has achieved immortality as the untiring Catholic priest who ministered to the lepers who were banished to a remote peninsula on Molokai. He lived at the leper colony and ceaselessly championed the leper’s cause, eventually contracting leprosy and dying of the disease. Today, leprosy is fully treatable and leper colonies are, fortunately, a thing of the past.