In his lifetime, Father Damien may not have fit the idealized image of a saint.

He was headstrong, impatient and demanding.

He was a relentless complainer, infuriating the Board of Health and at times his own religious order with his impolitic demands for supplies and other help for his suffering flock.

His staunchest defender, Robert Louis Stevenson, described him as a "plain, uncouth peasant."

But Damien's impending canonization as a saint of the Roman Catholic church is a reminder of how history can be changed, for the better, by ordinary people with ordinary weaknesses, who lack wealth, power or political connections. In other words, by people like most of us.

Among the Moloka'i community he called "we lepers," Damien built the physical and spiritual foundations for a normal society, in a place desperate for it.

This included construction projects — churches, homes, cemeteries — as well as basic human needs then in short supply: consolation for the dying, comfort for the living, love, sympathy and kindness.

Damien's faithful service to the Hansen's Disease patients on Moloka'i's Kalaupapa Peninsula proved influential and inspiring, then and now.

In his own time, his work made it forever impossible to neglect those he left behind. And he motivated others, notably Mother Teresa of Calcutta, to follow his example in caring for the poorest and most marginalized of the world's people.

Elevating Father Damien to Saint Damien is not meant merely to honor a long-dead priest. It is meant to hold him up as an example: to remind us that building a better world is neither beyond our abilities nor the sole province of government officialdom.

We are not all meant to be saints. But we are meant to find Damien's virtues in ourselves, and put them to work.