Philippine-native who helped shape the present church in Hawaii dies in her home country

By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Maryknoll Sister Grace Dorothy Lim, an influential force in the diocese over the past three decades whose work in a variety of ministries helped shape the church in Hawaii today, died on Feb. 28, in the Philippines. She had just completed her latest project there and was to have returned to Hawaii on April 24. She was 82 and a Maryknoll Sister for 51 years.

Her funeral Mass is scheduled for March 8 in the Philippines, where she will be buried. Bishop Larry Silva will preside at a “celebration of life” Mass in her memory at St. Anthony Church in Kalihi, on Saturday, March 29, at 10 a.m.

In her nearly 40 years in Hawaii, Sister Grace Dorothy broke new ground in whatever direction she stepped, whether it was in diocesan leadership, marriage tribunal work, ethnic ministry, priest recruitment, education, immigration, small Christian communities, youth ministry, fundraising or diplomacy.

A native of the Philippines, her first assignment as a Maryknoll Sister was teaching junior high on Maui. She would later become the first diocesan chancellor of Filipino ancestry in the United States and one of the first women to hold that position.

In the early 1970s, at the request of Bishop John J. Scanlan, Sister Grace Dorothy started the Catholic Immigrant Center in Kalihi which survives today as the Catholic Charities Immigrant Services.

Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario sent her to Washington and Ottowa to earn a master’s degree and licentiate in canon law, and during the 1980s she served on the diocesan tribunal as a promoter of justice and a judge. Bishop Ferrario also named her chancellor.

In the 1990s, Sister Grace Dorothy ran the office of Filipino Ministry, after which Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo put her in charge of the Office of Ethnic Ministries, which served Filipino, Hispanic, Samoan, Korean, Vietnamese, Tongan, Chinese and Japanese Catholics.

In addition to her official duties, Sister Grace was always branching off on other projects.

During her early years as a teacher, principal and superintendent in the Philippines, she sought to improve the impoverished conditions of her students, even building houses for some of them.

As a diocesan tribunal official in Hawaii, she attacked the problem of invalid marriages, particularly among immigrants, by conducting multiple marriage convalidation classes, and had Hawaii’s bishops presiding over a number of festive group weddings.

She was director of the Diocesan Board of Conciliation, which sought to resolve conflicts through reconciliation, and served on the diocese’s acting committee for sexual misconduct.

She started an “Adopt a Priest” project to support financially the priests in Filipino ministry.

She served as the diocesan liaison to the family of the deposed Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos when he lived in Hawaii, dealing with thorny funeral issues and other matters.

She organized the annual “Bishop’s Concert of Choirs,” a showcase of parish musical talent at the Neal Blaisdell Center.

And she earned three master’s degrees to equip her as she progressed through her various responsibilities and pursuits.

‘See, they’re doing something’

Cristeta Lorente Lim was born in Taguin, Ilocos Sur, Philippines on Jan. 4, 1926, one of five children of Urbana Lorente and Doroteo Lim. Her two sisters became Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.

When she was about 10 years old, her parish priest gave her a copy of the Maryknoll magazine, “The Field Afar.” On the back cover was a picture of two Maryknoll Sisters in Chinese hats and rubber boots trudging through a soaked rice paddy with their skirts raised.

“That’s what I want to be,” she told her mother. “See, they’re doing something.”

After graduating with a bachelor of science in education, she entered the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation at Maryknoll, N.Y., on Sept. 4, 1951, at age 25.

At the reception of her religious habit, Cristeta took the name Grace Dorothy, which she kept for the rest of her life. She made her first profession on March 7, 1954, in New York, and her final vows on the same date in 1960 in the Philippines.

Sister Grace Dorothy’s first assignment in 1954 was as a junior high school teacher at St. Anthony School in Wailuku. But she was deported the following year for overstaying a student visa, which arrived five days later. Back in the Philippines, she taught at Maryknoll College for two years before being sent north to run a tiny school housed “under the first floor of the rectory.”

When she left eight years later, her school had 16 new classrooms, a library, a clinic and a breakfast program. In her “spare” time, moved by the plight of two homeless families of her students, she had two houses built for them. She did it through hard work and sacrifice, plus a good measure of charm and artful persuasion, enlisting the help of friends, relatives, neighborhood carpenters, landowners, the Knights of Columbus and the military.

Her next assignment, in 1966, was as superintendent of all the Maryknoll schools in the Philippines, which she accomplished while serving as her order’s assistant regional superior and studying for a master’s in theology which she received in 1968.

Sister Grace Dorothy returned to Hawaii in 1969 to be principal of St. Anthony Grade School in Wailuku and coordinator of religious education.

In 1971, she began her advocacy work for Filipino immigrants in Honolulu. In 1973, she obtained a master’s degree in community leadership from Central Michigan University. She started Maryknoll Immigrant Services project at St. John the Baptist Parish, Kalihi, moving the program in 1974 to St. Theresa Parish on North School Street. In 1980, it became the Catholic Immigrant Center, the forerunner of Catholic Charities Hawaii Immigrant Services.

Office of Ethnic ministries

Perhaps her greatest contribution to the Diocese of Honolulu was her work in ethnic ministries.

In a 2002 interview in the Hawaii Catholic Herald, Sister Grace Dorothy relayed the story of how she recruited the first priests from the Philippines for her Office of Filipino Ministry.

“In 1990 when I took over, I said that we would not get off the ground as a ministry unless we have priests,” she said. “All we can do is pray the rosary with the people – give a few workshops and seminars. But what they needed was the sacramental ministry, which we could not give.”

So she asked Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario if, while visiting her family in the Philippines, she could take a letter to the Filipino bishops requesting priests for Hawaii. He agreed.

“I was lucky enough that when I got to Manila they were having the second plenary session of bishops,” she said. “I asked to see my archbishop, who was very accommodating.”

Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of the archdiocese of Nueva Segovia invited her to lunch to meet other bishops from Northern Luzon.

“Of course, during the lunch, they were all laughing and teasing saying, ‘Why doesn’t Hawaii have any ordained priests to become chancellor? They have to get a woman to become chancellor,’” she said.

Bishop Quevedo replied, “she’s not just a woman.”

Sister Grace explained her mission and in two days she was making her pitch at a meeting of about 25 priests.

“I gave them the challenge,” she said. “You are not there for vacation; you are coming as missionaries.”

Three diocesan priests were soon enlisted, Fathers Rudy Ferrer, Larenzo Rebebes and Benny Cabaca. And the La Salette Fathers sent Father Joven Junio.

Sister Grace and her four priests developed an evangelization and catechism program that included teaching seminars and workshops and radio programs.

“It was a very dedicated group I had – the first group was outstanding,” she said.

Today, 16 priests from seven Philippine dioceses serve in Hawaii and 15 La Salette Fathers administer 10 parishes, more than any other religious order in the islands.

In 1997 she dropped her tribunal duties to head full-time the Office of Ethnic Ministries, which came to include services to the Filipinos, Hispanics, Samoans, Koreans, Vietnamese, Tongans, Chinese and Japanese.

Sister Grace Dorothy supervised the growing group of men herself for several years before the ethnic ministries was absorbed into the Office of Clergy.

“She was a very determined, assertive in a good way,” Father Secor said, former head of the Office of Clergy and now pastor of Holy Trinity Parish.

“She very concerned with making sure the needs of the ethnic groups were responded to,” he said. “She wasn’t afraid to express her herself.”

“I think she really wanted the people to take a more active part in the life of the church here,” Father Secor said. “So it would be important to have people who spoke their language, knew their culture, made them feel more at home.”

It was a vision Bishops Joseph A. Ferrario and Francis X. DiLorenzo supported, he said.

“She planted the seeds for what we have now, the groundwork, the associations and relationships that continue to be very helpful to us,” Father Secor said.

‘The future of the church’

Sister Grace Dorothy retired from chancery work at age 76, only to pursue another concern — Catholic youth. Sister Grace had been working for many years with AGAPE Youth and Young Adults, a ministry founded at St. Joseph Church in Waipahu by Al and Geri Simbahon.

“If you talk about the young church, this is it,” she told the Hawaii Catholic Herald at the time. “So if we are looking ahead, we have got to be doing something for these young people.”

AGAPE has hundreds of Leeward Oahu youth and young adults involved in its programs. Thousands more have made one of its retreats. Sister Grace served as the group’s spiritual director. She was also the spiritual director of the Missionary Basic Christian Communities (MBCC), an organization that ran retreats and small prayer and Bible study groups and had a strong youth focus.

“This is the future of the church,” she said of the younger generation. “We have to look at them. The sooner we give to them in their Christian formation, the better off our church will be.”

According to Geri Simbahon, who with her husband Al Simbahon are the directors of AGAPE, “her main strength was making sure that our ministry was funded.”

Sister Grace Dorothy wanted to help the youth, Simbahon said, particularly in the area of education and in raising money for scholarships.

“She worked very hard for their needs,” Simbahon said. “Sister Grace was an inspiration to all of us.”

In 2006, a request from the Opifices Christi, a young community of priests and brothers in the Philippines, led her to request a temporary leave from Maryknoll’s Central Pacific Region, of which Hawaii is a part, to help revitalize the St. Isidore Learning Center in Burgos, Pangasinan.

Sister Grace quickly put the school on an even footing, but didn’t stop there. Seeing the plight of the poor in the neighborhood, she organized the women, and through a variety of projects, helped them put food on their tables and regain some dignity.

Having completed her work and having procured a community of sisters to operate the St. Isidore Learning Center, she bought an airplane ticket to return to Hawaii in April. But on the evening of Feb. 27, Sister Grace was rushed to the hospital with chest pains and died early the next morning.