Greatest Belgian ever.

Father Damiaan named
Greatest Belgian ever
2 December 2005

BRUSSELS — Jozef De Veuster, better known as Father Damiaan, was voted as the Greatest Belgian ever on Thursday night.

Father Damiaan's work with the leprous in the Pacific won him hearts among Belgian voters, as he eclipsed the claims of Paul Janssen and Eddy Merckx.

He now takes his place among the greatest Europeans ever, alongside the likes of Winston Churchill (UK), Konrad Adenauer (Germany) and Pim Fortuyn (the Netherlands), who have won similar votes in their respective countries.

The final vote was held in conjunction with a show in the Oude Vleeshalle in Mechelen which was broadcast live by VRT channel Canvas.

However, the vote has spanned several months, with countless television and radio programmes and newspaper reports devoted to the debate.
 
Initially, 111 achievers were nominated to become the Greatest Belgian and 25,000 voters selected the 10 finalists, namely:

Father Damiaan
Ambiorix
Andreas Vesalius
Peter Paul Rubens
Paul Janssen
Eddy Merckx
Gerardus Mercator
Hendrik Conscience
Father Daens
Jacques Brel

The final vote started on 24 November and during the final show on Thursday night, the list of 10 nominees was reduced to just three. The laureate was eventually selected from those three candidates.

In the final phase, the last three candidates started with a clean slate and television viewers could only SMS or phone through their votes, newspaper 'De Standaard' reported on Friday.

Eventual winner, Father Damiaan (1840-89) grew up in Tremelo before leaving for missionary work at the end of 1863 in Hawaii.

He was sent in 1873 to the island of Molokaï and stayed there for the rest of his life to work with those suffering from leprosy. He eventually died in 1889 from leprosy, but had become world famous in the meantime

Second-place getter Eddy Merckx won 525 cycling races on the road, including the Milan-San Remo (seven times), the Paris-Roubaix (3) and the Tour de France (5).

Dr Paul Janssen established in 1953 the company Janssen Pharmaceutica, which is now one of the world's most important pharmaceutical companies. He developed 80 new medicines, of which five are on the list of vital medicines recommended by the World Health Organisation.

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=49&story_id=25852

 

Damiaan is an unusual winner in that he is not a politician.
As far as I know he's the only winner worldwide of a national contest like this that wasn't some kind of politician.

 

He's counted as French.

 

Procyon
Damiaan is not an uncommon name in Dutch-speaking Belgium, it is very rare around here, couldn't care less how the rest of the planet decides to translate the name.

As far as I know there used to be a huge amount of missionary activity in Belgian Congo. In those days there were so many Belgian missionaries that apparently they had enough of them left to send them to a number of other places as well.

Hergé must have made it into the top 100 of greatest Belgians ever, but apparently not into the top 10.

Anyway here is a short biography of Damiaan.
http://www.ssccpicpus.com/damian/damenglish.html

 

Hillclimber
I know that it is a hallowed tradition among a certain faction of Evangelicals to predict from the comfort of their homes the final fate of famous Christians.
But tradition or not, poor taste or not, it's a silly habit in any case because they often don't know enough about them and their surroundings to make a meaningfull judgment.

 

Which in the end is not that strange hillclimber. It's after all a personal relationship.
Silly hillclimber indeed.
What we can see in this case is a person's good works, which can both be an attempt to buy one's way into Heaven, or an outgrowth of leading a sanctified life after being born again.

Damiaan was either mounting a massive campaign to get 'Upstairs', or he was doing the leading the fruitfull life of a Saved person thing, much better than anybody on this messageboard.
It's probably bad form to suggest the former if it is distinctly possible a person was doing the latter.

 

Galatian?
Absolutely.
Mioque?
Absolutely not.