Brother Joseph Dutton, Friend of the Lepers of Molokai

Joseph Dutton, born Ira Dutton in 1843, was a good kid, born to protestant parents. He fought in the Civil War as a quartermaster, advancing from sergeant to captain because of his efficiency and ability. The decade after the Civil War he later called his "wild years" due to a bad marriage and a life of dissipation, under the influence of "John Barleycorn." In the late 1870s he changed his ways and became Catholic as he sought a way to do penance for his bad decade. He tried the contemplative life at the Trappist Abbey at Gethsemane in Kentucky, but that didn't work. He stumbled upon an article about Father Damien de Veuster, the priest who lived among the lepers on the Kalaupapa peninsula of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The plight of those people and the work done by Father Damien inspired him. He joined Father Damien in 1886 and didn't leave Kalaupapa until 1930, when he was 87 years old. During those 44 years he became everything to the lepers. He was administrator, nurse, pharmacist, carpenter, stone mason, and even baseball coach. His work became known around the world, in part because he wrote thousands of letters to anyone. He died in 1931 at 87 years old. In 2022 his cause for canonization was opened, and he is now known as Servant of God.