St. Damien’s relatives speak up against criticism of saint’s statue in U.S. Capitol catholicnews.com
Upset by the suggestion raised by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, that St. Damien was a white supremacist colonizer, two of the saint's Belgian relatives, representing his extended family, wrote her an open letter Aug. 20.
“Like many Belgians — fellow countrymen of Damien, who in 2005 elected him as ‘Greatest Belgian’ for his achievements at the other side of the world — we got a shock when reading in the newspaper that you chose, amongst the 102 statues in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, the one of our relative, Father Damien, as a ‘typical example of white colonialism, patriarchy and white supremacist culture,'” the letter said…
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