Three sisters and one brother of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary have moved to Molokai to create a “community in mission” on the island to reach out “to the poor, the elderly, the unchurched.”

Sister Herman Julia Aki, Sister Marie Christine Plateros, Sister Jessie Kai and Brother Charles Kaahanui arrived on Molokai from Oahu on July 9. The sisters are renting a house in Kamalo, nine miles east of the main town of Kaunakakai, near St. Joseph Church, a tiny mission built by Blessed Damien in 1876.

Brother Charles is residing nearby in a house on the grounds of St. Joseph Church with Sacred Hearts Father Clyde Guerreiro, the pastor of Blessed Damien Parish, which encompasses the entire island except Kalaupapa.

Sacred Hearts Father Felix Vandebroek is the pastor of St. Francis Parish in Kalaupapa, the isolated settlement for Hansen’s disease patients where Father Damien served.

In an arrangement unique in the diocese, Father Guerreiro and Father Vandebroek also serve as each other’s associate pastors.

Blessed Damien Parish has four churches. The main one is St. Sophia in Kaunakakai. The outlying churches are St. Vincent in Maunaloa, Our Lady of Sorrows in Kaluaaha, and St. Joseph.

The mission statement of the new Sacred Hearts community states that it is “called to serve all the people of Molokai.”

“Our special emphasis will be reaching out to the poor, the elderly, the unchurched; supporting the pastoral plan of Blessed Damien Catholic Parish; and keeping the spirit of Damien de Veuster, SS.CC. alive through our attitude and our relationships with one another and with the laity,” the statement continues.

“We fulfill our mission by living our charism with zeal and joy, thus contributing to the refounding of our Congregation while witnessing to the spirituality of Damien,” it concludes.

According to Sacred Hearts Sister Helene Wood, superior of the Hawaii sisters, the community was “a long time in the planning.”

The first step was the appointment on July 1 of last year of Father Guerreiro as pastor of the Molokai Catholic Community, as the Blessed Damien Parish was called then. The island, which had been staffed by Sacred Hearts priests since the arrival of Father Damien in 1873, had not had one since 1977.

“The people were asking, ‘When are the fathers coming back?’” Sister Helene said.

The new community members are volunteers, she said, who had been doing a variety of ministries on Oahu.

The group will not jump immediately into any big projects, Sister Helene said.

“This first year is to listen and to observe,” she explained. None of the new members had ever worked on Molokai. In fact, this is the first time Sacred Hearts Sisters have been assigned to the island.

The community has already consulted with a panel of Molokai parish and community leaders, Sister Helene said, and are learning about the urgency of the situation caused by the closing of Molokai Ranch, which had been the primary employer on the island’s west side.

One important ministry of the Sacred Hearts order is the contemplation and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which the group will do at St. Sophia Church.

Although the present group is composed of religious from Hawaii, the Molokai mission is sponsored by the Sacred Hearts Congregation’s entire U.S. conference, which includes the priests and brothers of the East Coast, the West Coast and Hawaii, and the sisters of the Pacific province.

This means that the financial backing of the community is national, Sister Helene said, and that future members could come from the mainland. The community will not depend on financial support from the island itself which is suffering hard economic times.

“As much as we can we are relying on ourselves to maintain it,” Sister Helene said.

The parish is in the middle of a fundraising campaign to replace St. Sophia’s with a new church named for Father Damien. Future Sacred Hearts plans for Molokai include a Damien information and pilgrimage center, a youth camp and a retreat center.

The Molokai group is the only Sacred Hearts community in Hawaii outside Oahu. The Hawaii sisters also have community members working in New Mexico and India.