ROME — Pope Benedict XVI will elevate Father Damien of Molokaçi to sainthood Sunday in St. Peter’s Square, 120 years after the Sacred Hearts priest died in the Hansen’s disease settlement of Kalaupapa.

Tens of thousands of people, including some 600 Hawaiçi residents, are expected to gather in the square for the canonization of Father Damien and four others.
The ceremony is set to start at 10 a.m. Sunday in Vatican City (10 p.m. today in Hawaiçi), and Father Damien will officially become Saint Damien about 10:30 a.m., when the pope reads a passage in Latin that adds the Belgian priest to the Canon of Saints of the Roman Catholic Church.
During the canonization, a 14-foot-by-12-foot tapestry depicting Father Damien will hang on the façade of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The image used for the tapestry is one of the most well-known photos of Father Damien, taken near the end of his life, when it is apparent he is suffering from Hansen’s disease.
The Very Rev. Javier Alvarez Ossorio, superior general of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, of which Father Damien was a member, said the photo was chosen because it shows the priest bearing a “badge of honor” — his Hansen’s disease.
Father Damien died of the disease in 1889, at age 49.
Damien will be Hawaiçi’s first saint, and the ninth person who served on what is now American soil to be given the honor.
During a news conference Saturday in Rome, Ossorio said the road to Father Damien’s canonization has been a long one.
He pointed out that shortly after Damien’s death, people were calling for his canonization. “We all knew that he was a saint,” Ossorio said. “120 years, and here we are.”
Last night, about 530 Hawaiçi residents on a pilgrimage to Rome with Honolulu Diocese Bishop Larry Silva for the canonization joined more than 1,000 Damien devotees from the around the world for a vigil Mass at the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
The group filled the massive basilica, where many sat on the floor or stood. Ossorio celebrated the Mass, speaking in several languages for the diverse crowd.
“Thank you, Jesus, for the strange happiness that inundated Damien’s heart,” he said. “The happiness of a free man who claimed nothing for himself. The happiness that no pain, no sickness, no disdain, no poverty, not even death could take away.”