Brother Joseph Dutton of Molokai

In the past five years, Father Damien and Marianne Cope became Hawaii’s first two Catholic saints. Brother Joseph Dutton could become the third. Like them, he spent the rest of his life, forty-two years, helping exiled leprosy victims in Kalaupapa, Molokai.

Brother Joseph wasn’t always a Catholic missionary. In Wisconsin, the civil war veteran succeeded in his career, but struggled with depression, a failed marriage, and alcoholism. At age forty, Brother Joseph adopted the Catholic faith, retired from his job, and started a new life. He told his friends,

I had a feeling that I wanted to be in touch with human sufferings, to be active in the relief of those of my fellow-beings who were afflicted, yet so as not to bring me in direct contact with the outside world.

Read more about Brother Joseph in “Washington Beau Brummel Who Turned Monk Spent 36 Years Among Lepers of Molokai.”

Washington Beau Brummel Who Turned Monk Spent 36 Years Among Lepers of Molokai
The evening world, June 28, 1922, Page 20
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1922-06-28/ed-1/seq-20/

---