Sacred Hearts Father Raphael Smulders, 97, served on Kauai, Maui and Lanai
By Lisa Benoit
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Sacred Hearts Father Raphael Smulders, who built Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church at Waimea on Kauai in the early 1940s and neighboring St. Theresa Church in Kekaha, died on May 1 at Straub Hospital in Honolulu, where he had been hospitalized two days prior. He was 97 and a priest for 71 years .
Father Smulders’ funeral will be a joint one, on May 12, with Sacred Hearts Father Mark Consalvi who died in Honolulu on April 28. The viewing will be 5-7 p.m. at St. Patrick Church in Kaimuki, followed by the funeral liturgy. The priests will be buried on May 13 at Hawaiian Memorial the next day at 9 a.m.
Father Smulders served in parishes as pastor or associate from the time he arrived in Hawaii in 1935.
Born on July 2, 1906 in Loon-op-Zand, Holland, to Joanna Bruurs and Henricus Drik, Father Smulders grew up in “small town the size of Wailuku where the majority of the people were shoemakers,” according to a 1984 article about the priest in the Hawaii Catholic Herald.
While attending public elementary school, he knew at age 11 that he wanted to become a priest but didn’t enter the seminary until age 14 because his father needed him to help on the farm.
He then spent seven years in the minor seminary at St. Oedenrode, Holland, and six years at the major seminary in Valkenburg, Holland. He made his profession to the Sacred Hearts Order in 1929 in Valkenburg and was ordained there on July 30, 1934.
A year later, Father Smulders accompanied Hawaii’s Sacred Hearts Bishop Stephen Alencastre and three German priests on a missionary apostolate to Hawaii, according to the Herald account. He arrived in Hawaii on Nov. 14, 1935, and his first assignment was at the small village of Kealia, Kauai.
In the Herald story, Father Smulders said, “The priest at Kealia was asked to accompany the remains of Father Damien back to Belgium, so I took over his duties while he was away.”
He then served at Eleele, Makaweli and Waimea on Kauai, where he built a new church. He next assignment was at St. Theresa Parish in Kekaha from January 1936 to 1943.
Father Smulders ministered to hundreds of servicemen during World War II.
“I remember saying Mass at the barracks (on Kauai) the day after the Pearl Harbor invasion,” he said in the article. “The soldiers had their helmets on and their weapons ready. American planes kept flying over Kauai and everyone was afraid the Japanese would return.”
Father Smulders was then assigned to Sacred Hearts Church on Lanai until January 1946.
There, he also ministered to about 300 servicemen of “all ranks and creeds” and he visited the wounded and sick soldiers who came to the hospital on Lanai from all over the Pacific.
After the war, he was able to go back to Holland and visit his family, who he hadn’t heard from during the war.
After, he served at Holy Rosary Parish in Paia from 1946 to 1948. He then served as pastor of St. Joseph Parish, Makawao, Maui, from 1948 until 1966. While there, he built two wings of the school. He was again assigned as pastor on Lanai from 1966 until 1968.
From 1968 to 1974, he served at Holy Cross Church in San Francisco and was a chaplain at Kaiser Hospital where he acquired a special love for hospital ministry, according to Sacred Hearts Father Clarence Guerreiro, provincial of the Sacred Hearts Fathers and Priests.
Father Smulders then returned to Hawaii in 1976 and served on Maui at St. Rita Parish in Haiku, St. Joseph Parish in Makawao, and Maria Lanakila Parish, Lahaina, until 1998.
He retired at St. Patrick Monastery in Kaimuki in 1998 where he lived until his death. According to Father Guerreiro, Father Smulders continued serving in hospital ministry “even in retirement on Maui at Hale Makua and Maui Memorial and in Honolulu at Leahi Hospital.”
“Father [Smulders] enjoyed playing golf and was blessed with incredible good health,” said Father Guerreiro. “He continued golfing until recently.”