By PEGGY MOEN
Joseph Dutton may soon become the third Catholic missionary to the Molokai leper settlement — on the Kalaupapa peninsula — to be canonized, joining Fr. Damien (canonized in 2009) and Mother Marianne Cope (canonized in 2012).
And he is one of several military veterans advancing toward possible sainthood.
This news about Dutton comes at the same time that the USCCB voted by 99 percent to advance the cause of Fr. Joseph Verbis Lafleur, a World War II military chaplain. Lafleur deployed to the Philippines, and spent two and a half years as a prisoner of war of the Japanese. “Fr. Lafleur did a lot of work in the prison camps as well,” said nephew Richard Lafleur. “He gave his own food when they were starving to death.”
Other veterans in line for possible sainthood are Fr. Vincent Capodanno, MM, a Navy chaplain killed in Vietnam while assigned to a Marine unit in 1967, and Fr. Emil Kapaun, an Army captain and chaplain who died in a prison camp during the Korean War in 1951.
Dutton is the only member of the laity among those veterans headed for sainthood and, if canonized, he will be the only lay person who served on Molokai to be declared a saint.
Bishop Silva posted a one-page edict — dated and read by him — on Saturday, May 29. The edict states that he had received a formal written request “to initiate the cause for beatification and canonization of the Servant of God Joseph Dutton, layman.”
Waldery Hilgeman, Dutton’s Rome-based postulator, his official canonization advocate, had issued the request on May 24. The Joseph Dutton Guild, a group Bishop Silva established in 2015, asked Hilgeman to submit the request to the bishop.
The edict, addressed to the “faithful of the Diocese of Honolulu,” is a request for “any pertinent information…for or against the eventual beatification and canonization” of Dutton from those Honolulu faithful. The document gave instructions as to where to send that information by a June 30, 2021 deadline.
Any Wanderer readers who may have pertinent information are requested to send it after July 1 and to use this email address: sainthoodfordutton@rcchawaii.org.
Bishop Silva read the edict at the Saturday vigil Mass in the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace and, after Mass, posted it to a side door. He further asked that it be mounted on the doors of St. Damien of Molokai Church in Kaunakakai and St. Francis Church in Kalaupapa, published in the Hawaii Catholic Herald, and posted on diocesan websites.
The edict is a part of three inquiries — of the local faithful, of the bishops of the San Francisco province to which the Diocese of Honolulu belongs, and of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.
If the Congregation for Saints finds nothing that should impede the sainthood cause, it gives that cause a Nihil Obstat, allowing it to proceed.
Bishop Silva told the Hawaii Catholic Herald that the “formal” process begins when the postulator sends the petition to the congregation and the congregation accepts it. “This is probably several months away — to be optimistic,” the bishop noted.
Dutton served on the Kalaupapa Peninsula from his arrival in 1886 until he died in a Honolulu hospital on March 26, 1931, just a month short of what would have been his eighty-eighth birthday.
His workload first consisted of assisting the then-ailing Fr. Damien, who had contracted leprosy but still stayed active in caring for his people. Later, Dutton managed the Baldwin School for Boys on Molokai. He carried on a voluminous correspondence and received a letter from President Warren Harding, spontaneously praising his self-sacrificing work.
When Dutton arrived, Fr. Damien affectionately nicknamed him “Brother” Dutton, but he never entered religious life and always remained a layman. To avoid confusion, the Diocese of Honolulu is discouraging the use of “Brother” with his name.
Dutton had enjoyed an all-American childhood — he was born in scenic Stowe, Vt., on April 27, 1843 and grew up in Janesville, Wis., where his family moved when he was about four years old. The family was Protestant and Joseph taught Sunday school.
During the Civil War, he served as a quartermaster and attained the rank of first lieutenant. His regiment saw little combat, but, writes Charles J. Dutton (no relation) in The Samaritans of Molokai (Dodd, Mead and Company, New York: 1932), “the function assigned to the 13th [Volunteer Infantry] usually was that of holding positions that other units had won — not an unimportant job, since often the loss of such a position would have brought disaster.”
He added that the 13th was, through garrison and picket duty, associated with Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Chickamauga, and Sherman’s March to the Sea.
It was after the Civil War that Dutton’s all-American life fell apart. First he got into a disastrous marriage. His friends had warned him against marrying the woman because of her reputation, but he didn’t listen. She ran up bills Dutton had to pay off and carried on numerous affairs, finally running off to New York with another man.
He became what the National Park Service (see www.nps.gov/kala) calls “a functioning alcoholic” — drinking heavily, but still holding down jobs, including two years of gathering the Union dead and arranging their burials in national cemeteries. The 1870 U.S. Census cites his home as Memphis and his employment as railroad clerk. He worked from 1875-1883 for the government, settling war claims.
He took the pledge to drink no more in 1876 and in 1881 got a divorce.
Dutton wanted to atone for his misdeeds during his years of heavy drinking. Through the influence of Catholic friends in Memphis, he entered the Catholic Church, which he saw as the best means of atoning for his sins. Jorantha Semmes, who was married to a cousin of Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes, was instrumental in his conversion and served as his godmother. Dutton was baptized on his 40th birthday at St. Peter’s Church in Memphis.
He stayed at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani, Ky., for almost two years, discerning a vocation. Ultimately, he decided he was called to an active, not a contemplative, life.
Dutton traveled to New Orleans with a priest friend and in a convent reading room there, he read an article about Fr. Damien’s work at the Molokai leper settlement. He then realized his true vocation. After making some inquiries, particularly of Charles Warren Stoddard at Notre Dame who had been to Molokai, Dutton headed for Hawaii. And the rest is history.
Eva K. Betz in her book Yankee at Molokai commented: “To atone for a few wild years, he had spent a lifetime of self-imposed penance.”
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