HCH photo by Patrick Downes

Randy King, president of Seawind Tours, explains the handouts at the canonization travel briefing on Sept. 12, including the official jacket.

Rome-ward bound

550 travelers prepare to travel to the Vatican to witness the canonization of Father Damien of Molokai

By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

“May we wear muumuus … to show we are from Hawaii,” asked a woman during a question and answer session after an hour-long orientation last week for travelers on the official Hawaii Father Damien canonization tour.

“Certainly,” was the answer that came with the caveat that the Island apparel may or may not be suitable for the Roman autumn which runs a good 10 to 20 degrees cooler than Hawaii.

HCH photo by Patrick Downes Julie Anna Bardon, a St. John Vianney parishioner and member of the Damien Canonization Choir, shows off her tour jacket and tote bag.

The excitement was palpable among the several hundred people who bravely navigated Waikiki on a Saturday evening to gather in St. Augustine Church on Sept. 12 to hear travel representatives go over the details of the trip to the Oct. 11 canonization Mass in Rome.

In the first days of October, hundreds of passport-holding kamaainas will board planes heading east, stopping over at various mainland airports before resuming their journeys to Belgium and Rome, 12,000 miles away.

According to Randy King, the president of Seawind Tours and Travel, the company the Diocese of Honolulu picked to coordinate travel to the once-in-a-lifetime event, the 550 going include both seasoned travelers and those with passports still stiff and new.

All have come up with $4,000 to $5,000 to make one of two trips, the main one that includes a five-day stop in Father Damien’s homeland of Belgium, and a shorter one straight to Rome.

At the Waikiki briefing, the travelers received a blue and white canvas tote bag that held their navy blue tour jacket decorated with the canonization logo, a spare line drawing of Father Damien embracing a leprosy patient and the slogan, “He loved them to the end.”

The bags also carried the pilgrims’ around-the-neck ID card, their “ticket” to meals and many group events, and a striking 32-page, full-color trip guide filled with everything from historical notes to exchange rates to packing tips. The booklet is liberally illustrated with historic photos and documents from Father Damien’s time.

Traveling with the Hawaii group will be Bishop Larry Silva and a dozen residents from Kalaupapa, about half of the settlement’s remaining former Hansen’s disease patients, and their caregivers and companions. The residents’ passage was paid through fundraising efforts earlier this year.

Also traveling with the group will be news staff from KGMB, KITV and KHON television stations, and a reporter from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and one from the Honolulu Advertiser.

Audrey Toguchi, the retired Aiea High School teacher whose inexplicable cure from cancer was the “miracle” Pope Benedict XVI used as validation for this canonization, will also be with the Hawaii group with her husband Yukio.

A Hawaii Damien Choir and a hula halau are also making the trip.

Four airlines out of Hawaii

The first 350 Hawaii pilgrims will leave Hawaii on Oct. 1 on four airlines — Continental, United, American and Delta — mostly between 7:50 and 9:15 p.m.

Depending on the airlines, the flights will stop in Newark, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Frankfurt before they continue on to Belgium. Some United passengers will transfer to Lufthansa on the mainland.

The pilgrims touch down in Brussels on Oct. 3, one-and-a-half calendar days later — 24 hours of actual travel plus the 12 hours Belgium is already ahead of Hawaii.

The remainder of the travelers, the Rome-only contingent, leave in two groups, one on Oct. 4 in the evening, the other the following morning on Oct. 5. Both groups will land in Rome on Oct. 6, the first in the morning, the second in the evening.

Twenty-two Seawind staff members will be traveling with the Hawaii groups. Executives for the locally-owned travel company, which specializes in group travel, have already made four scouting trips to Belgium and Rome to plan this custom tour.

According to Kalena Yim, Seawind’s chief executive officer, Belgium is going to roll out the red carpet for the Hawaii travelers, who will be the guests of about 30,000 Belgians at a day-long Damien festival on Oct. 4 in Tremelo, the priest’s birthplace.

“They are very excited that we are coming,” he said.

The Belgian leg will include a couple of big city tours and Mass at the tomb of Damien in Louvain.

In Rome, besides the canonization itself, the travelers will take in the glories of the eternal city with its basilicas and cathedrals, catacombs and Coliseum. A day trip to Assisi, St. Francis’ hometown, will pay tribute to Franciscan Sister Blessed Marianne Cope, Father Damien’s successor who is also a canonization candidate.

In Rome, 11 buses, each carrying about 50, will shuttle people to the different events. Each pilgrim will be assigned to a particular bus, effectively creating 11 separate tour groups that will come together for the big events. Some of the smaller activities will take place separately.

The canonization pilgrimage is unique and its logistics are complex, Yim said. The Kalaupapa residents, who are in their 70s and 80s, have special transportation and health needs that include everything from wheelchairs to specially-equipped vans. They also need to be shielded from the swarm of media who are bound to seek them out.

“We have to make sure that we have backup plans, hospital contacts, communication systems that work,” Yim said. “So many things take place behind the scenes.”

In Rome the 550 pilgrims will be split between two hotels, one a 10 minute bus ride away from St. Peter’s, the other a 15-minute walk away. Two hotels will also be used in Brussels.

According to Yim, Father Alfred Bell, the Sacred Hearts priest coordination canonization activities for the thousands of pilgrims coming for Father Damien, estimates about 10,000 in the ticketed seated section for the canonization, and about 30,000 to 50,000 people standing.

Damien is only one of five people to be canonized by the pope that day. Many thousands are also expected for the other newly-named saints who are from Poland, Spain and France.

The Hawaii Seawind group will have unreserved seats. The Kalaupapa residents will have a reserved section.

St. Peter’s Square, which is about 790 feet wide and 1,115 feet long, can hold up to 400,000 people standing.

Other groups going

The Seawind group is not the only organized tour to the canonization from Hawaii. Other much smaller tour groups will be making the trip.

Star of the Sea parishioner Ed Lum will be taking 48 from Hawaii and six more from the mainland. They leave Hawaii on Oct. 2 and will do some extensive touring of Italy before the canonization. On the day after the canonization, most of Lum’s group will continue on to the Holy Land for five days there.

Father Sebastian Chacko, the pastor of Holy Family Church in Honolulu, will lead a group of 44 to an Oct. 5-20 tour that will include Rome and Israel. Most of the travelers are from leeward Oahu, where Father Chacko has served for the past several years as the former pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Waianae.

Father Chacko said that this trip will be the seventh religious pilgrimage he has led.

Msgr. Terrence Watanabe, the pastor of St. Theresa Parish in Kihei, will be part of a 25-member group arranged by the Hawaiian Travel Club leaving Maui on Oct. 3 for about 10 days in Italy. Besides the canonization in Rome, they will visit Assisi, Tuscany, and Florence. They return to Hawaii on Oct. 17.

Official Father Damien Pilgrimage Tour