HCH photo by Anna Weaver

Sacred hula in St. Francis Basilica

Franciscans for a day

In Assisi, where St. Francis grew closer to God, Hawaii pilgrims walk and walk and walk and pray

By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

ASSISI -- At the end of the two-hour walking tour, we learned that St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century lover of God and nature, was a small man with big ears. The proof was in the fresco.

That inside knowledge was a bonus of a strenuous, and deeply moving, trek through the narrow streets and steep staircases of the saint’s town of Assisi. The visit itself was an extra treat for the St. Damien canonization pilgrims.

St. Francis is the founder of the Franciscan order, whose sisters succeeded Father Damien in Kalaupapa. Their superior, Mother Marianne Cope, herself a candidate for sainthood, was beatified in 2005. That connection was more than enough to justify the three-hour bus ride from Rome through the beautiful Italian countryside on Oct. 9.

Making the Assisi visit special for the more than 500 Hawaii pilgrims was a private prayer service in St. Francis Basilica at the end of the tour. The ancient church standing high above sloping Umbrian hillsides is filled with mosaics and frescos telling the life of St. Francis, whose bones rest deep beneath its floors.

The Hawaii travelers filled the basilica’s pews while the accompanying Damien choir, standing in a semi-circle behind the altar, sang “Blessed Mother Marianne” to open the service.

The pilgrimage hula halau, in matching orange T-shirts, danced “O Oe I‘o,” a song about the Hawaiian hawk whose size and ability to fly the highest of all Hawaiian birds, made it a symbol of the universal divine spirit. It was an appropriate number for a church of St. Francis, who considered birds his favorite animals because, in flight, they approached heaven. (That was another fact learned on the tour.)

After the singing of a psalm and a Scripture reading, Sister of St. Francis Patricia Burkard, the general minister of Blessed Marianne’s order, offered a brief address.

At Kalaupapa was the “intersection of the lives of two wonderful people,” Sister Patricia Burkard said. “Blessed Marianne, like Father Damien, had a great heart, a compassionate heart.”

The nun encouraged the pilgrims to welcome the example of Blessed Damien and Blessed Marianne “into our hearts, into our being, into our actions.”

“When we come on pilgrimage, we never return the same,” Sister Burkard said.

“Make some of their virtues, our virtues,” she said.

Sister Patricia was one of several Sisters of St. Francis joining the Hawaii pilgrimage from both the islands and from Syracuse, N.Y.

The day in Assisi ended with an evening at a nearby restaurant where the pasta was al dente and the wine all plenty.

A three-hour bus nap back to the hotel concluded the adventure.