After 38 years as a missionary priest, Father Robert Wynne is going overseas

By Patrick Downes

After 38 years in Maryknoll, Father Robert F. Wynne is finally going to an overseas mission.

The desire that made him leave his accounting job in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago to join the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, or Maryknoll, will be fulfilled in January when he steps off the plane in Cambodia for a new assignment.

Except for nine years spent doing assorted Maryknoll business in New York, Father Wynne has served his entire priesthood in parishes on Oahu and on the Big Island. He loves the islands deeply and will miss its people, but he has never considered Hawaii to be an “overseas” assignment.

Father Wynne has two more weeks left as pastor of Annunciation Parish and Ascension Mission on the Big Island. His last day is Sept. 30.

His departure creates a milestone or two. When he arrived in Hawaii on July 31, 1968, to be an associate pastor at Sacred Heart in Honolulu, he was the last newly-ordained Maryknoll priest to be assigned to Hawaii.

Today he is Hawaii’s last Maryknoll pastor.

When he came 38 years ago, he was the “baby” of the Hawaii region. Now, at 68, he said he is “still the baby” in a Hawaii community of five priests and one brother, all of whom are either retired or partially active.

Joining Maryknoll

Father Wynne was born in Worcester, Mass. After high school he studied accounting for two years and in 1957, went to work for a large accounting firm. Thoughts of the priesthood lay in the back of his mind, and he pretty much left them there.

But after two years of work, he decided to “investigate the possibility” of going on an overseas mission. His research led him to Maryknoll. The society accepted him, but made him repeat his first two years of college to gain a liberal arts education.

He then spent his novitiate in Bedford, Mass., before studying theology at the Maryknoll Seminary in Ossining, N.Y. He was ordained on June 8, 1968.

Hawaii was his first assignment.

“I really did expect to get an assignment oversees,” he told the Hawaii Catholic Herald last week by phone. “I expected to be sent to the Orient someplace. I totally forgot we had guys in Hawaii.”

The first job — as associate pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Honolulu — was a “total surprise to me,” he said.

He served at Sacred Heart, Hawaii’s first Maryknoll parish, for six years.

In 1974, he went to Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Honokaa on the Big Island. He was there a year and five months, before he was moved back to New York to do Maryknoll “promotion work” in Buffalo. He arrived in January during what he called “the blizzard of 1976.”

Father Wynne spent three years on the mainland soliciting support for Maryknoll missions.

Back to the islands

In 1979, the Sacred Hearts Fathers were leaving Sacred Heart Parish in Waianae, and Bishop John J. Scanlan had asked the Maryknoll Fathers to fill the slot.

Hawaii regional superior Father John Stankard wanted Father Wynne there, but headquarters wanted to sign him up for five more years of promotions work.

Anxious to return to the field, Father Wynne made a “deal” to return to New York after the Waianae assignment was over.

He spent four and a half year productive years at Sacred Heart, during which time he built a new hall and a 10-classroom parish facility.

Then it was back to Buffalo, arriving this time, Father Wynne laughs, “during the blizzard of ‘84.”

Back in New York, Father Wynne ended up doing something “totally different.” He was put in charge of Maryknoll’s 40-staff Office of Information Services, the department which operated the mainframe computer system that managed the society’s extensive magazine publishing, donor and payroll databases.

He did that for six years, not as a technician — he knew little about computers — but as someone who “knew the society” and how it could benefit from the new technology.

Then, having given nine of his 20 years of priesthood to administrative work, Father Wynne again tried for an “overseas” assignment. He agreed on the Philippines, innocently suggesting that, if at age 52 he couldn’t learn the language, he could always go back to Hawaii.

At that his superior told him, “Forget it, I’ll just send you back to Hawaii.”

Before he left, he took a short vacation in Ecuador to visit a friend in the Peace Corps. He returned to hear news from Hawaii that Star of the Sea Mission Church in Kalapana had been hauled from the path of a Kilauea lava flow only to be left stranded at an ignominious spot on the side of a highway.

“I pity that poor pastor,” he remembered thinking.

Opening his mail later that same day, he learned he would be that pastor.

That assignment began his last long stretch in Hawaii. He served from 1990 to 1994 at Sacred Heart Parish in Pahoa, after which he went to Annunciation Parish in Waimea.

At Annunciation, his attempt to temporarily increase seating in the old, narrow parish church led to a more permanent solution — a new church.

With the expertise of a knowledgeable parish building commission — “a tremendous team” — the parish trimmed more than a million dollars off the lowest construction bid. The entire project, finished in 2003, included the new church, a new rectory, plus the revamping of the old church into classrooms. The total cost, with all the furnishings, fixtures and landscaping, was $2.5 million.

The parish paid it off in two and a half years.

Thoughts of Cambodia

The possibility of a Cambodia assignment emerged four years ago when Father Wynne stayed there for 10 days at a Maryknoll mission in preparation for a Maryknoll chapter meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.

The visit got him thinking: “I’d like to help out there.”

With this being his 12th year at Annunciation Parish, an assignment more than twice as long as previous pastors, “Cambodia … Cambodia,” kept surfacing during his morning meditations.

Because he is beyond Maryknoll’s retirement age of 65, Father Wynne is somewhat free to choose where he wants to serve. But he wondered if Cambodia was just a pipe dream.

He collected his doubts and sent them all to Father Jim Noonan, the Maryknoll priest and longtime friend heading the Cambodian mission.

“Is this realistic?” he asked. “At 68, having never spoken another language, will I just be a burden?”

Father Noonan consulted with Cambodia’s Maryknoll team of priests, sisters and seminarians. They gave Father Wynne the thumb’s up.

Cambodia’s Maryknoll missioners work in education, with AIDS patients, and with the thousands of citizens crippled and maimed by the world’s largest fields of unexploded land mines.

There are also opportunities for a priest to work in sacramental ministry among the country’s 250 foreign aid organizations, perhaps permitting Father Wynne English-speaking responsibilities.

Tall and trim, Father Wynne is in good health and takes no medication. He leaves Hawaii on Oct. 6, and will spend the holidays with his family on the east coast. Through November and December, he will submit to 13 inoculations in preparation for his new mission.

“Yes, I’m going to miss this place,” he said. “This has been a fantastic place, with a cooperative spirit, a good spirit.”

The pastor said the difficulty of leaving hit him two weeks ago at a parish advisory board meeting, when he was asked to leave the room, while the group discussed his going away party.

“When I had to step out the door, I realized, I’m on the outside now,” he said.

Nevertheless, it’s not retirement, a fact he finds reassuring. “I’m looking forward to a whole new adventure,” he said.

And, he noted, though he may be Hawaii’s last Maryknoll pastor, the society is still serving here in other ways.

“The mission continues,” Father Wynne said.