A Hawaii priest founds a pioneering religious community primarily of deaf men to minister to deaf Catholics

By Lisa Dahm

Father Thomas Coughlin’s lifelong dream to start a religious community where sign language for the deaf is the means of expression at both the Eucharistic table and the dinner table is finally becoming a reality.

A priest of the Diocese of Honolulu, he is one of five men making their first profession of vows as Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate, Aug. 27, in St. Albert’s Priory in Oakland, Calif.

Father Coughlin, who has been deaf since birth, is also the founder of the Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said. “I saw how badly we need a religious community of deaf priests and brothers dedicated to a deeper spiritual life and the deaf apostolate in the language of signs and the deaf culture milieu.”

The five men will pronounce their vows before Oakland’s Bishop Allen Vigneron, who erected the new community on May 18, 2004. Father Coughlin will remain a priest of the Diocese of Honolulu until he makes his final vows in a few years.

The path to the creation of this new order has been a long and challenging one for this determined priest. He has been making his case before bishops and cardinals coast to coast and out to Hawaii for nearly three decades.

Hawaii was an early and significant part of this journey.

Father Coughlin came to Honolulu in 1987 at the invitation of then-Bishop Joseph Ferrario. Ten years prior and against many odds, he had been ordained a priest of the Trinitarian order in Baltimore. His burning desire to serve the deaf Catholic community caused him to leave his order and seek the sponsorship of a diocesan bishop.

A friend introduced him to Bishop Ferrario, perhaps the only bishop in the United States at the time skilled in American Sign Language. The bishop welcomed Father Coughlin into the diocese and assigned him to Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Honolulu where he celebrated the Mass in sign language and created a ministry to the deaf. An interpreted Mass for the deaf continues there today.

In an April 8, 1987, interview with the Hawaii Catholic Herald, he expressed his determination to start an order of priests who are deaf for the deaf. At the time, few if any seminaries and religious orders welcomed deaf candidates.

Father Coughlin brought the Hawaii Catholic Herald up to date last month through e-mail. His energetic spirit, unflagging determination and gentle sense of humor jumped out of his computer messages.

His written responses were conversational, detailed with emotion, candid observations and a good-natured wit. The priest interjected the word “grin” after particularly amusing comments. Bottom line: he grins a lot.

Mainland pursuits

Father Coughlin left Hawaii in the early 1990s to follow his dream. In 1993 in Denver he joined the Dominicans. Although he remained a Dominican for only a year, he was encouraged by Father Timothy Radcliffe, the Master of the Dominican Order.

“In the fall of 1996 in New York City, he [Father Radcliffe] gently challenged me to go out to form a new branch in the Dominican Order designed specifically for the deaf candidates and apostolate,” Father Coughlin said.

Father Radcliffe could empathize; he once had temporarily lost his hearing due to illness.

“I left the meeting with such a deep inspiration,” he said. But it would take several years.

The new Dominican Master, Father Carlos Azpiroz, continues the support and advice.

Cardinal John O’Connor of New York invited Father Coughlin to start a seminary, called the House of Studies for Deaf Seminarians, in Yonkers, N.Y. But when the cardinal died in 2000, so did diocesan support for the seminary. It closed and Father Coughlin had to look elsewhere.

He approached the bishops and vicars general of several different dioceses seeking authorization to form a religious community, but they all “shooed” him away.

The reaction, he said, was common, and typical. Many viewed priests who are deaf as a people who needed special accommodations and treatment — in other words, a “problem.”

But Father Coughlin was preaching the opposite approach. Deaf priests are the “solution” to ministering to the more than 15 million deaf people in the United States. Only a small fraction of them go to Mass because it isn’t translated for them, he said.

“I have accepted this challenge along with its pain and sorrow because I have come to realize that this is the kind of road that God has placed me on, akin to the kind of road that Thomas Merton took,” he said.

Then-Archbishop, now Cardinal, William Levada of San Francisco heard Father Coughlin’s story and invited him to his archdiocese in 2002 to minister at St. Benedict Parish. That is where Father Coughlin established the Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate, an offshoot of Oakland’s Dominican community, to “preach the Gospel to deaf people in sign language and to give opportunities for deaf men to study for the priesthood in their native language, which is sign language.”

Four novices

The pioneer priest is especially proud of the four novices who have responded to the same call.

“They had the courage to join this new religious community with an uncertain future,” Father Coughlin said.

One of the men is Brother Andrew Sanchez, 49, of El Paso, Texas, a first-year theology student at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. Brother Sanchez has worked with among the deaf community for more than 25 years, interpreting, teaching and finding people jobs.

Like Father Coughlin, he had unsuccessfully sought priesthood within a religious community through which he could serve the deaf. After 11 months in another order, he contacted Father Coughlin and moved into the new community. He said he naturally fit in with the Dominican charism of preaching.

“There is a crying need for the deaf people to have evangelization,” said Sanchez, who is five years away from ordination.

Brother Adam Zawadzki, 21, of Indianapolis, Ind., is a junior at Queen of Holy Rosary College. Although he can hear, Brother Zawadzki feels he has a direct calling to work with people who are deaf — as a priest.

Brother Zawadzki was first drawn to sign language watching hymns being interpreted in his home church. His call to priesthood came at the end of high school. After earning an associate’s degree in sign language, he decided to pursue ordination.

Finding the Dominican Missionaries on the National Vocations Placement Service website, he e-mailed Father Coughlin.

At St. Benedict’s, Father Coughlin celebrates Mass for about 100 people each Sunday. They come from all over the San Francisco Bay area, some driving for about an hour. For those who can hear, Brother Zawadzki “voices” the liturgy.

“It is really interesting. It is a reverse of what you normally see,” he said. “Hearing people are not used to being interpreted.”

Brother Zawadzki said that just walking around the city in his habit — white alb with navy blue scapular and capuche, or cowl — easily leads to evangelization. When people learn that he belongs to the Missionaries of the Deaf Apostolate, it piques their interest.

Brother Gregoire Youbara, 26, was born and raised in Cameroon in central west Africa. Brother Youbara became deaf when he contracted mumps at age eight. At around the same time he was an altar boy feeling the tug of priesthood.

The president of the Cameroon National Association of the Deaf, who knew of Youbara’s desire to be a priest, gave him an article about Father Coughlin and the newly founded House of Studies for Deaf Seminarians in New York.

He wrote to Father Coughlin and the two kept in contact for two years.

Brother Youbara came to the United States on Jan. 12, 2003. He is now a senior at California State University, East Bay, majoring in Spanish and French.

Brother Youbara said he hopes to reach out to as many deaf people of different cultures and countries as possible, “bringing them the Good News.” He would also like to teach foreign languages to college level deaf students.

Also making his first profession will be Brother Isidore Niyongabo, 26, of Bumjumbra, Burundi.

In addition to the five who will make their profession, the Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate has two new hearing novices, Derrick Elkins, 25, of Lafayette, Louisiana and David Gitundu, 29, of Nairobi, Kenya.

Father Coughlin said that the trials of starting a new community have caused him “many sleepless nights,” but he believes that it is part of God’s design.

“I am only an instrument of his divine plan,” he said. “Like Thomas Merton once said something like this, ‘I do not know where the road goes or what lies ahead, but I ask for God’s grace to go on and to please God, whatever he wants me to do.’”