Photos by Anna Weaver

Father Joe Hennen greets a parishioner alongside Bishop Silva after Mass.

Aloha, welcome to Malia

Bishop Larry Silva makes his official episcopal visit to the tiny Big Island parish on homestead land

Story and photos by Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald

KEAUKAHA

Malia parishioners sing the Our Father at the 9 a.m. Mass on Jan. 31. The bishop jokes with Kailee and Tiah Cortez and an unidentified parishioner at an all-parish meeting on Jan. 31.

Don’t expect to slip in and out at Mass at Malia Puka O Kalani Parish. If you’re a visitor you won’t go unnoticed at the small parish in Keaukaha on the Big Island. In fact you’ll get a hand-crocheted lei made by a parishioner, be asked to sign a guestbook, and get introduced at the start of Mass.

So you can imagine how parishioners laid out the aloha mat for Bishop Larry Silva when he made his parish episcopal visitation to Malia — as it’s affectionately abbreviated — on Jan. 30 and 31.

“We make it our business to know everybody,” long-time parishioner and maintenance committee member Freida Lee chuckled after the 5:15 p.m. Mass on Jan. 30, the first day of the bishop’s visit, as a core group of parishioners headed to the hall for a Hawaiian meal.

And by the time he left the next evening, the bishop seemed to have shown his mutual aloha for Malia. Curtis Beck, a 30-year parishioner said, “Because we’re a small parish and kind of out of the way, you wonder if the bishop even knows you’re here. He proved to us that he does and that he cares.”

With his first parish episcopal visitation at St. Jude in Kapolei on Dec. 5 and 6, Bishop Silva has embarked on an estimated five-year tour of all 66 parishes in the Diocese of Honolulu, something that is not only part of his job description as bishop but also what he enjoys doing.

“It’s always good to be with the people of the parishes,” the bishop said. “I was a parish priest for so long that it’s in my blood.”

This year he’s slated to visit all the major islands except Lanai and Molokai for a total of 19 parishes. The bishop hand-picked the first 11 parishes that had a special interest to him, because, for example, they were recently declustered or were booming like St. Jude.

The trip to Malia followed the typical pattern of an episcopal visitation, which starts well-before Bishop Silva arrives. Sharon Chiarucci, the director of the Office for Parish Resources, asks parishes to complete a “self-study” report focusing on areas of community and evangelization, worship, faith formation, service, and parish leadership.

Parishes also reflect on the top three priorities they chose from the Diocesan Road Map strategic plan.

Bishop Silva presides at all the weekend Masses and preaches the homilies. He meets with parish leadership and socializes with parishioners after Masses before holding a wider parish meeting.

Bishop Silva says his aim is to listen to parishioners as they share what “goals, aspirations and challenges” they have for their parish. In turn he gives feedback on what he thinks a parish might set for short- and long-term goals.

“In these visits I want to let people know it’s not just their parish, but that they are a part of a wider diocese,” he said. “They can connect through me with the rest of the church.”

Chiarucci says that unlike a visit from the bishop for Confirmations or a parish anniversary, “I think this is his opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with both leadership and parishioners with what is working and what challenges they see for themselves.”

She follows up with the parishes after the bishop’s visit. At Malia for instance, after discussing with the parish’s resident priest, Crosier Father Joseph Hennen, the need for more parish layperson training, she’ll be back on March 13 for a Lenten workshop on parish identity and leadership.

Chiarucci said now that several episcopal visitations have taken place, she’s seeing the result of the self-studies: parishes have identified areas in which to improve and have started addressing them, “as opposed to leaving them in the ‘wouldn’t-it-be-nice’ category.”

A case study

Malia Puka O Kalani, which translates from Hawaiian as Mary, Gate of Heaven, is one of only two parishes in the diocese that sits on Hawaiian Homestead land. Consequently it has had a large number of native Hawaiian parishioners over the years and focused on incorporating the Hawaiian culture into its liturgy.

That can be seen and heard at its Masses. Many songs are in Hawaiian and accompanied by ukulele. The altar is made of koa and is covered by a cloth decorated with a tropical leaf design. The “candles” are oil lamps. The vestments have Hawaiian floral themes. And then there is, of course, the welcoming aloha spirit.

There was a time around 2004, when the parish was joined under one pastor with the much larger St. Joseph Parish in Hilo, that attendance dramatically dropped. At its low point, parishioners Peggy and Joe Farias recall that there were more people serving its one Sunday Mass at 9 a.m. than there were people in the pews.

“People at St. Joseph were even talking about considering a consolidation,” Joe said.

But there are signs that the parish is now coming back to life. On the weekend of Jan. 30 and 31 there were 65 people at the Saturday evening Mass and slightly more than that at the Sunday morning Mass. In November, the parish added a 5:15 p.m. Mass to keep up with growing Mass attendance and it now also hosts a Spanish-language Mass on Sundays at 4 p.m.

Parishioner Wendy Cortez is preparing to start a religious education program next fall and has volunteer teachers.

“Without a religious education program, we can’t grow,” she said.

The classes are also part of one of the parish’s top Road Map priorities — youth and young adults ministry.

The church and buildings had fallen into some disrepair and so “repair and maintenance” is another Road Map priority.

Father Hennen said that when he mentioned “the need to paint” last fall, “the next thing I knew they had rounded up a whole crew.”

The exterior and interior of the church was repainted, new kneelers made, artwork refurbished, and a bid secured on replacing the church roof.

Monthly penance services have resumed, along with the start of an altar server program and four parish committees.

“We’re headed towards being much more of a total sacrament parish,” Father Hennen said.

One main desire, repeated by parishioners throughout the episcopal visitation weekend, was to be declustered from St. Joseph Parish.

“We want to make the bishop see that we can do it on our own,” Lee said.

Besides Father Hennen’s health, an area of concern for the bishop with Malia was also “Is the parish ready to stand on its own?” At the end of his visitation Bishop Silva said he’d take another look at Malia’s situation in the summer to see how the parish has been working to revitalize its faith community.

When Bishop Silva met with the Hispanic community after its 4 p.m. Mass on Jan. 31, they requested a resident Spanish-speaking priest. The bishop said he’s working on making that happen soon.

“Father Joe,” as he’s known, has been coming to Hawaii to serve in short stints over the last six years. Beginning in August 2008, he worked at St. Joseph, Hilo, until a relapse of his leukemia which required him to return to the mainland for treatment this past summer.

Since September, he’s been back at Malia Puka O Kalani exclusively.

Father Hennen called himself “the new kid on the block,” and his parishioners clearly love him. At the all-parish meeting, one of the questions a church member half-jokingly asked Bishop Silva was, “Can we hold Fr. Joe as a hostage?”

“They don’t have to hold me hostage. I’ll stay freely,” Father Hennen said.

But he worries about parish continuity beyond its priests, since he won’t be at Malia forever. That’s one reason for the Lenten leadership seminar with Chiarucci and an emphasis on the final top Road Map priority — “leadership.”

But he thinks the parish is on its way to being declustered from St. Joseph, and the Jan. 30-31 episcopal visitation gave Malia Puka O Kalani parishioners a guide to get there.

“Bishop Silva came here definitely as a shepherd and as a servant and that came through loud and clear to the parishioners,” he said. “He gave us the goals to work towards.”

“Malia has been on a roller coaster since 2004,” he said. But thanks to the “fiercely independent” parishioners with a “contagious spirit,” it is working its way back to full community life.