By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Father Adrian Gervacio first came to Hawaii from the Philippines more than 30 years ago, on Aug. 5, 1975, to minister to the predominantly Ilocano-speaking Filipino community.

He had been ordained eight years earlier for the Diocese of Laoag in Ilocos Norte, the province where he was born.

When his aunt, who lived in Hawaii, suggested that Filipino immigrants here from the Ilocos provinces could use a priest who spoke their language, he applied. His arrival, he said, filled a ministry “vacuum” created when the Msgr. Osmundo Calip, the famed missionary to the islands’ Filipinos and founder of the Filipino Catholic Clubs, left years before.

Anchored at St. Theresa Church in Kalihi-Palama, Father Gervacio spent five years touring the state, moving from parish to parish, giving missions in Ilocano on each island.

“I was a one-man band,” he told the Hawaii Catholic Herald by phone on Feb. 2 from St. John Apostle and Evangelist Parish in Mililani, his new assignment.

Father Gervacio was incardinated into the Diocese of Honolulu two years after he arrived, in June of 1977.

In 1980, intending to embark on a “round two” of parish missions, he was instead named associate pastor of St. Theresa. In 1982, he was called to “fill up a puka” at St. Anthony Parish, Kalihi, while the pastor was away attending classes on the Mainland, and ended up as pastor.

By 1986, he sought permission from then-Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario for a change of ministry. What he had in mind was a chaplaincy in the U.S. Navy.

“He said, ‘I will give you three years,’” Father Gervacio recalled the bishop telling him. “The three years became six, nine, 12, 20 years.”

Father Gervacio’s military career took him all over the place. He spent two years in Okinawa with the Marines, two years at the Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines, five years at the Guam naval air station and a little more than a year in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Then it was three years at a naval hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, followed by three years at the naval base at Port Hueneme near Oxnard, Calif., and then his last assignment in 2002 at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, Calif. He retired from the Navy on Nov. 1, 2006.

Father Gervacio described his time with the Navy as “a great experience.”

“I learned a lot, “ he said. “It was a great ministry.”

Most of what he did was “parish work in military situations,” though his time at Subic Bay was spent mostly onboard ship. As a “circuit rider” he was deployed on about 14 ships for approximately three weeks at a time.

When retirement made him available once again for work in Hawaii, Bishop Larry Silva assigned him in January to be temporary administrator of St. John Apostle and Evangelist Parish.

At 67, Father Gervacio said he is “looking forward” to more time spent in active ministry in Hawaii where his aunt and many cousins still live.