Father Damien de Veuster, who was proclaimed a saint by Pope Benedict XVI on Sept. 11, 2009, was a 19th-century Belgian missionary who ministered to people with leprosy. St. Damien spent the last years of his life here at the leper colony on the island of Molokai, Hawaii, before dying of the disease. Today, the former leper colony is Kaluapapa National Historic Park. You can reach this isolated park by a mule ride down a steep cliff.

