About eight saints are considered American because, even though they may have been born elsewhere, they did their good works in what is now the United States.

When Father Damien de Veuster ministered to leprosy patients in Kalaupapa, Hawai'i was an independent kingdom.

Irene Letoto, the retired curator of the Damien Museum in Waikiki, which is currently closed, believes Hawai'i can lay claim to Damien even though he was born in Belgium.

He was ordained on O'ahu, studied at the Sacred Hearts Father's College of 'Ahuimanu on the Windward side and did his most famous work on Moloka'i.

"The efforts to have him made a saint began with the Sacred Hearts order here," Letoto said. "I consider him somewhat local."

Exhuming his body and moving it to Belgium in 1936 was controversial, Letoto explained. At first, his corpse wasn't returned to Belgium because "when he died, his body was not best in world," she said — not surprising, given that he died of Hansen's disease.

The Rev. Ed Popish, a Sacred Hearts priest who served at Kalaupapa but now lives at the order's general house in Rome, understands the Island connection, too.

"It's great," Popish said. "To be a saint means to be universal, but to be attached to a place gives impetus to the work he did."

Letoto adds that while many may claim him, Islanders shouldn't be proprietary.

"He's not just for Hawaiians or Belgians. Damien was a man for everybody," she said.