Mr. Kenneth Kowalewski oversees all Campus Ministry programs and can be reached by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - or by calling (909) 596-1946.
Retreat Programs
In order to allow students the opportunity to look within themselves and to search out their true self-worth, their relationship with God and with their neighbor, and to witness Christian faith in a lived community, the school offers retreat experiences in the senior (Kairos), freshman , sophomore and junior years. Although the retreats are a Christian experience, the student does not have to be Christian to attend. Additionally, a Youth Day experience is made available to all students semi-annually.
Celebration of Mass and the Sacrament of Reconciliation
Masses for the entire school community are celebrated on special occasions such as at the start of the school year, Blessed Damien Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Youth Day, and the end of the school year. There are annual Father-Son and Mother-Son Masses as well. At other times, Mass may be offered for different grades or for individual religion classes. Mass is a part of each of the retreat programs, and the senior class celebrates Mass at the return of each Kairos Retreat.
In addition some sports teams attend Mass on the days of competitions. A Mass or prayer service is offered in the school chapel each morning.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is available to the student body on designated days in Advent and Lent.
Christian Service Programs
Each student must complete at least twenty-five (25) hours of service before the beginning of their junior year and at least seventy-five (75) hours before the beginning of their senior year. The full 100 hours must be completed by the end of the first semester of the senior year. Each student is also required to do a self-evaluation of his projects(s).
Campus Outreach Program
The Damien community conducts collections of canned goods, clothing, and money to help the poor and homeless locally, nationally, and internationally. Collections are made in a variety of ways and the active participation of the students and parents is integral to the success of the program.
Joseph de Veuster, known throughout the world as Father Damien, was born on January 3, 1840, at Tremeloo, (not far from Louvain) Belgium. On February 2, 1859, he followed in the footsteps of his brother Pamphile by entering the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary; and on October 7, 1860, he made his religious profession choosing the name of Damien.
In October, 1863, Damien's brother, Father Pamphile, who had been assigned to the Sacred Hearts Mission in Hawaii, fell ill of typhus. Damien, not yet ordained, begged to be allowed to take his brother's place, for which permission was granted.
Following ordination to the Priesthood on May 21, 1864, in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu, he spent the next eight years in the district of Kohala on the Island of Hawaii. In July, 1872, Damien wrote to the Father General that many of his parishioners had been sent to the Leper Settlement on Molokai; he spoke of "an undeniable feeling that soon I shall join them."
When Damien first arrived on the Island of Molokai on May 10, 1873, the situation, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, was "a pitiful place to visit and hell to dwell in." Lepers were sent there to rot and die, and no attempt was made to cure or arrest the disease. Lepers were outcasts from society, separated from those they loved, suffering from a disease considered loathsome and unclean, all but abandoned by the medical profession, and without even the comfort of any but the most infrequent religious services. They easily succumbed to apathy and hopelessness. Many, disheartened to the point of desperation, seized upon anything that would give them a moment's surcease - alcohol, gambling, lewd dancing, and debauchery - and their cry of welcome as boatload after boatload of new patients arrived, was, "in this place there is no law." Damien wrote, 'The Settlement absolutely has to have a priest . . . I believe it my duty to offer myself ... I am willing to devote my life to the leprosy victims. The sick are arriving by boatloads. They die in droves ... I become a leper with lepers, in order to win them all for Jesus Christ. When I preach, I am in the habit of saying, 'We Lepers!"
For sixteen years - from 1873 to 1889 - Father Damien ministered to the lepers, bringing as much material and spiritual comfort to them as he could. His self- imposed duties included anything that would help or comfort them, from bandaging sores, making coffins, and digging graves to building churches, hearing confessions, and saying Mass. He went to considerable trouble in making a much needed fresh-water supply available for the Settlement. He ate from a common bowl food prepared by a leper, smoked the common pipe passed from mouth to mouth, and used tools which were commonly owned. Indeed he was, in the words of St. Paul, 'All things to all men.'
'From morning till night,' he wrote, 'I am surrounded by terrible physical and moral miseries. However, I try to have a certain gaiety to build their courage.' In that effort, he certainly was successful. The presence of this concerned and good-natured priest completely changed the atmosphere of the Settlement. The poor people quickly sensed that they had a true friend. They were no longer orphans. A wave of hope surged through the colony. They were no longer those who society had conveniently chosen to forget, because Damien has opened the eyes of the world to the needs and sufferings of millions of lepers and had thereby stirred many to the generous support of work on their behalf.
Five years after becoming a victim of the dreaded disease, Father Damien died peacefully on April 15, 1889, at the beginning of Holy Week. On June 4, 1995, Pope John Paul II declared Father Damien Blessed and established his Feast Day as May 10.
Very few missionaries receive gratitude and high public honor for their dedication and zeal. We, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts, are rightly proud, therefore, that not only is this high school named in his honor, but that also there stands a statue in his honor in a very exclusive gallery - Statuary Hall - in the nation's capitol, Washington, DC.
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