Father Robert Wynne is probably the last Maryknoll pastor in Hawaii. When he leaves his assignment at Annunciation Church in Waimea at the end of the month, Hawaii will be without a “Maryknoll parish” for the first time in 79 years. Father Thomas Donnelly, who assisted him, left for the mainland last month and will retire in California.

The Maryknoll Fathers have administered 23 parishes in Hawaii since they arrived in 1927 to take the reigns of Sacred Heart Church Punahou.

On Oct. 1, the last of them, Annunciation Parish and its Ascension Mission in Puako, will be handed to Father Robert Schwarzhaupt, a diocesan priest.

The departure of Fathers Wynne and Donnelly leave four Maryknoll priests and one Maryknoll brother in Hawaii. The only priest now assigned to a parish is Father Thomas Killackey who lives in residence at St. John Apostle and Evangelist Church in Mililani.

The invitation of the Maryknoll Fathers to Hawaii by Bishop Stephen Alencastre 80 years ago was an historic occasion. The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, as they were formally known would be the first new community to staff a Catholic church in Hawaii after a full century of ministry by the Sacred Hearts Fathers.

On Feb. 4, 1927, Father William S. Kress and Brother Philip Morini arrived in Honolulu for assignment at Sacred Heart Church in Honolulu’s Punahou district.

From the arrival of its first priests, the society, and its companion order of Maryknoll Sisters, have been very generous to the islands, supplying the church here with hundreds of missioners.

More than 125 Maryknoll priests and nine brothers have served in the islands over the past 79 years. Of the 23 Hawaii parishes they have staffed, 15 were on the Big Island, seven were on Oahu and one was on Maui. At one point in the 1960s, more than 40 Maryknollers were stationed here, among them many “China hands,” missionaries forced out of China by the communist government.

Five Hawaii-born men have become Maryknoll priests.

Father Richard E. Rhodes, a Punahou High School graduate, was ordained in 1928 and spent over 60 years in China and Taiwan. He died in 1995, a few days before his 94th birthday.

Father Ralph W. Sylva, of the first graduating class of Maryknoll High School in 1935, was ordained in 1945 and served into Mexico, Bolivia and Hawaii. He died in July 1991.

Father Anthony V. Rodrigues, a graduate of St. Louis College, was ordained for Maryknoll in 1954. He later joined the Trappist order and afterward entered the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps.

Father Clyde Philips, from the St. Joseph High School, Hilo, class of 1967, was ordained in 1978, served many years in the Philippines and is now the regional superior of the Maryknoll Fathers in the United States.

Father Ron Pacheco, born in Hilo but raised on the Mainland, was ordained in 1979. He is assigned at the Maryknoll mission in Taiwan.

After the Maryknoll Fathers turned over the administration of their mother church, Sacred Heart, Punahou, in 1998, they still ran three parishes on the Big Island and one on Oahu. Each was eventually turned over to diocesan administration.

They maintain a Maryknoll Fathers Unit House on Dole Street in Honolulu where three priests live. Maryknoll Brother Venard Ruane, who has served in Hawaii for more than 50 years, resides at the rectory at Sacred Heart Church, Punahou.