HCH photo by Anna Weaver
With Robert Mondoy on the keyboards, Calvin Liu directs the Damien Choir in a Sept. 3 practice session.
Songs and dances for a new saint
A Hawaii choir and hula halau are practicing for canonization-related performances in Belgium and Italy
By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald
Soon after Pat Chang was born in Kalaupapa she was carried to Oahu by her mother’s sister to be raised. Decades later she finds herself preparing to attend the canonization of Father Damien de Veuster, the man who first brought comfort and hope to people like her parents. Not only will Chang attend the celebrations in Belgium and Rome, she and her husband Winfred will sing in the 60-person Damien Choir that will perform both in Hawaii and Europe.
To say she’s happy is an understatement.
“It’s fantastic!” she said on Sept. 3 at the choir’s weekly rehearsal. Winfred recalled both of them going to Belgium with the Damien Choir in 1994 for what was supposed to be Father Damien’s beatification.
However, the beatification was postponed a year because Pope John Paul II broke his hip. Even though the Changs couldn’t attend the rescheduled ceremony, they have great memories of the friendly Belgian people.
“We performed in a minor basilica and could hear ourselves singing. There were goosebumps,” he said.
Now the Changs have the opportunity — barring any unforeseen circumstances — to be a part of Damien’s canonization.
“It’s going to be exciting,” Pat said.
Someone else who’s excited is Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace’s music director, Calvin Liu, a self-described “Damien junkie” and the co-director of the St. Damien Choir with Robert Mondoy, St. John Vianney’s music director. He led the choir to the 1994 “beatification that wasn’t.” He also visits Kalaupapa at least every July.
Liu is preparing the St. Damien Choir, made up of singers from different parishes, to perform a concert of 10 songs relating to quotes by Damien, following a loose narrative that traces his life from his arrival in Hawaii to his death.
Two new Damien hymns written for the canonization by Mondoy (“A Faithful Son of Sacred Hearts”) and Hawaii Catholic Herald editor Patrick Downes, (“The Heart of Damien”) also will be performed. (See sidebar)
Hawaiian chanter Kathryn Mahealani Wong, a protégé of the late kumu John Keola Lake, will be traveling with the choir. She plans to perform the same chant that Lake did at Damien’s beatification, a Ho‘o‘uwe‘uwe chant that remembers someone who has passed away.
“You feel the loss of that person that’s gone, but because there’s a belief in God, there’s a comfort that person has gone on to be with Akua,” Wong said. “You show that person or their work is not forgotten.”
For Wong, performing a Hawaiian chant in Europe is a way to show the people of Hawaii’s love for Damien.
“Rome’s a cool place to be, but to practice my culture in a place so far away, that’s another layer of wealth to me, of richness for the whole thing,” she said.
Liu isn’t sure of exactly when, or how many songs, the St. Damien Choir will perform in Belgium and Rome. He does know they will participate in the Mass at Father Damien’s grave in Louvain, Belgium, at night prayer in Assisi, and at the Hawaiian Mass the day after his canonization.
At the actual canonization on Oct. 11, the choir will be sitting with the rest of the Hawaii pilgrims and, Liu said, any performance will be spontaneous.
What he’s especially looking forward to are the Hawaii performances the choir will hold before and after the canonization, including its debut on Oct. 25 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace and several events in Kalaupapa.
“We want to involve Hawaii people as much as possible in this event that’s happening a half a world away,” Liu said.
Cathedral parishioner and Damien Choir member Mona Lisa Wirta was working as a full-time nurse when Father Damien was beatified in 1995 and couldn’t take time off to go. But, she says, “I promised myself that since I couldn’t go to the beatification, if he was canonized in my lifetime, I’d go.”
Now she is, as a choir member and a fan of Father Damien. Now retired, she knows it isn’t an easy task to take care of Hansen’s disease patients. “That’s pretty intense for one person to do,” she said, of what Father Damien dealt with when he first arrived on Molokai.
“To me he was a hero because of the dedication he had,” Wirta said. “In that sense, you knew he was doing God’s work and to the best of his ability.”
Hula for Damien
When Bishop Silva was looking to send a hula halau to Father Damien’s canonization, St. Augustine Waikiki parishioner Leimomi Ho found herself approached by her pastor Sacred Hearts Father Lane Akiona. He asked Ho, who is the kumu hula of Keali‘ika‘apunihonua Ke‘ena A‘o Hula, if her halau would be interested.
She agreed and her 30-member halau will be traveling to Belgium and Rome to perform on several different occasions.
“It’s just so awesome and it’s a neat feeling that words can’t even express,” Ho said.
The halau will perform at least once in Belgium, once in Assisi, in Rome at some point and, it is hoped, on other occasions. She has prepared “one big package” of four olis and five kahiko dances that can be performed together or separately. In addition her halau is practicing two hula auana numbers for if the occasion arises.
The halau holds regular three-hour practices twice a week and has been working on its Damien numbers since spring. The group continues to fundraise for travel expenses and has put together two outfits. One “Vatican-appropriate” outfit is white, with long sleeves, a high neck and a pa‘u skirt, and the other is two shades of green, the island color of Molokai.
Ho carefully selected the chants and dances the halau will be doing.
“Some of the dances we do remind us about what we have in our world that is most important, which firstly is our God,” she said. “So some of our mele is pertaining to the Holy Spirit and the spirituality of everything.”
Ho debuted several of the numbers on Sept. 12 at a briefing for travelers to the canonization at St. Augustine Church, Waikiki.