Maryknoll Sister Anna Marian Pavao, part-Hawaiian, a religious for 61 years

Maryknoll Sister Anna Marian Pavao, a Honolulu-born religious with ties to Hawaiian royalty who served in Hawaii, the Marshall Islands and Indonesia, died peacefully on Dec. 15 at the Maryknoll Sisters Residential Care at Maryknoll, NY. She was 84 years old and a Maryknoll Sister for 61 years.

She had a great love for her homeland, which grew in great part from her happy childhood in Hawaii and her unique family connection to Hawaii’s history, culture and traditions.

Sister Anna Marian was born Ida Pavao on Sept. 3, 1923, in Honolulu, one of five children of Ida and William Pavao. Her father was the son of Portuguese immigrants from Madeira and her mother was the daughter of a Hawaiian princess-in-waiting in Queen Liliuokalani’s royal court and a New Englander from Prince Edward Island.

The land of the family’s ancestral home on the Big Island was a gift of Hawaii’s last monarch to Ida’s grandparents.

As a student at Maryknoll High School in Honolulu, the young Ida had thought of joining the Maryknoll Sisters but when she graduated in 1941, enrolled in the University of Hawaii instead. When the bombing of Pearl Harbor shut down the university, she found herself at Pearl Harbor as a typist in a supply office. After the schools reopened, Ida returned to an accelerated program earning a bachelor’s degree in education in three years, graduating in 1946.

She entered Maryknoll on Oct. 1, 1946 and took the name Sister Anna Marian and kept it even as many religious returned to their baptismal names after Vatican II. She pronounced her first vows on April 6, 1949, at Maryknoll, NY, and her final vows on April 6, 1952, in Honolulu.

Sister Anna Marian was assigned in 1949 to teach at St. Anthony School in Kalihi. In 1956, she was missioned to Likiep in the Marshall Islands.

In 1960, she earned a master’s in special education from Hunter College in New York City.

She returned to Hawaii in 1961 to teach seventh grade at St. Augustine School in Waikiki. From 1963 to 1966 she served as the school principal and also as superior of St. Augustine Convent. In 1969, she was named principal of St. Anthony Grade School in Wailuku.

At Maryknoll’s 10th general assembly in October 1970 in New York, Sister Anna Marian was elected vice-president of the congregation and re-elected at the 11th general assembly in 1974.

Completing her mandate in 1979, she was assigned to Bandung, Indonesia, taking time first to study the Indonesian language and culture at the University of Hawaii. In Indonesia she taught English to teachers working on master’s degrees at Parahyangan Catholic University.

Sister Anna Marian returned to Hawaii in 1986 to be a parish coordinator in Honokaa on the Big Island. In March 1989, Honolulu Bishop Joseph Ferrario appointed her as an advocate on the diocesan marriage tribunal.

Though Sister Anna Marian retired in 1991, she continued as a pastoral volunteer on the Hamakua Coast for another 10 years before returning in 2001 to the Maryknoll Center in New York.

Her funeral Mass was celebrated Dec. 18 at Maryknoll Center. She is buried in the Maryknoll Community Cemetery.