Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai, was born Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious order. He won recognition for his ministry to people with leprosy (also known as Hansen's disease), who had been placed under a government- sanctioned medical quarantine on the island of Molokai in the Kingdom of Hawaii. After sixteen years caring for the physical, spiritual and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, he eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is widely considered a "martyr of charity". He is the nineteenth person elevated to sainthood (the ninth by the Roman Catholic Church) who had lived, worked, and died in what is now territory of the United States.[citation needed] In the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches, Damien is considered a saint, one who is holy and worthy of public veneration.