Father Damien was buried on Molokai where he had served leprosy patients, Belgium took the body in 1936, and Hawaii got back his right hand in 1995

Joseph De Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, on 3 January 1840, took the name Damien and landed in Honolulu on 19 March 1864. From 1866 to 1969 people with Hansen's disease in Hawaii were separated from their families on the Kalaupapa peninsula of Molokai. In 1873 Damien volunteered to serve its roughly 700 patients. His own leprosy was announced in 1884. He died at Kalawao on 15 April 1889, aged 49. He was buried under the pandanus tree where he had slept his first night on Molokai. In early 1936 the Belgian government asked for the body, and it was exhumed. Settlement residents sang "Aloha ʻOe" and wept as it left. The US Army gave it a hero's departure with bombers overhead. On 3 May 1936 King Leopold III received it at Antwerp, and the body was placed in a crypt in Louvain (Leuven). Pope John Paul II beatified Damien in Brussels on 4 June 1995. The relic of his right hand was given to the Hawaiian delegation and reburied in his original grave at Kalawao on 22 July 1995. He was canonised on 11 October 2009. His body is in Leuven; his hand is on Molokai.