John Paul II and Hawaii

The most traveled pope in history never traveled to one of the world’s most traveled destinations — Hawaii. Actually none of his 104 trips even came close. But that is more due to Hawaii’s location than any papal slight.

Not only does our home have the distinction of being the most isolated populated spot on the planet, it also happens to be longitudinally on the direct opposite side of the globe from Rome. Which means, that unless Hawaii is your specific destination, it will never be along the way to or from anywhere else, if you call the Vatican City home.

There really was no pressing reason for the pope to come here. Nevertheless, Hawaii would have relished a papal visit, and our demonstration of aloha would have been as bright and spectacular as any Kilauea eruption. But he couldn’t go everywhere. While he went to Guam, he didn’t go to Seattle. And though he visited Fiji, he never saw Samoa. And while he stopped in Botswana, he skipped Nashville.

Though he never passed through, this pope touched Hawaii like no other pontiff in history. Not in any broad theoretical mass media sense, but actually, palpably, consciously.

How? For starters, he selected for beatification two of our precious own — Damien and Marianne, two remarkable people who chose Hawaii to be the soil of their sanctity.

Everyone knew Damien. The Mother Teresa of his day whose sainthood cause had languished for more than a century, he was the martyr of Molokai who inspired authors, playwrights and filmmakers but apparently not a dispassionate Vatican saint-making bureaucracy, until a man named John Paul, a genius of gesture and symbol who, seeking to show humanity its divine image and likeness, elevated hundreds of earthly heroes with the badge of canonization.

He raised Damien, our Damien, who came here from Europe as an idealistic youth, was ordained a priest in our cathedral on Fort Street, who ate poi, spoke Hawaiian, embraced our children, buried our dead and ultimately died for our people. In beatifying Damien in 1995, Pope John Paul placed him on a universal lampstand, for all the world to see. In the process, John Paul became the first pope in history to applaud hula, to receive a lei (and a kiss), and to speak in Hawaiian: “Ma kakou pakahe a pau ka maluhia a ma ke aloha o Iesu Christo.” (May the peace and love o Jesus Christ be with you.)

He approved the beatification of Marianne, our Marianne, the daughter of Francis who, like Damien, embraced Hawaii and its forgotten people, rejecting a return to her former life in New York. Of the hundreds of beatifications Pope John Paul initiated, Molokai’s Mother Marianne Cope was among his last. She was propelled from the status of servant of God to venerable to blessed within the last 12 months of the pope’s life, a process that usually takes years. John Paul died less than 50 days before the May 15 ceremony at which she will be beatified by his successor.

In the beatifications of Damien and Marianne, John Paul paid universal tribute to a tragically beautiful slip of Hawaiian land (that even most island residents have never visited) sanctified by the suffering of an indigenous people stricken by a biblical plague.

In doing so he smiled on the thousands of people buried there and the few who are still with us today.

Hawaii twice blessed. That’s worth a half-dozen papal visits.

Pope John Paul II also left a lasting mark on the Hawaii church in his ordinary course of duty. In his appointment of our last two bishops, Joseph Ferrario and Francis X. DiLorenzo, he fashioned a Hawaii church more concerned about the poor, more attuned to the disabled, more welcoming of the immigrant, more empowering for women, and more exciting to youth. All are conscious or unconscious expressions of his all-embracing papacy.

Then too, Pope John Paul II was as much a magnet for Hawaii residents as he was for residents of the rest of the world. We may have had farther to go, but not always. At World Youth Days in Denver, Manila and Toronto and other places, Hawaii folks were always there among the gathered throngs. They also were present in Rome at his Wednesday audiences and at his Sunday blessings.

So while Hawaii was never a physical destination for our late papal pilgrim of peace, he did not leave us neglected. He had a big heart and it is safe to say we inhabited a little bit of it.

And who knows, perhaps the next pope will want to see for himself the land of Damien and Marianne. And then there’s always Brother Joseph Dutton.