True to his goal to promote more actively the priesthood as a life’s calling for young men, Bishop Larry Silva has appointed a full-time director of vocations.

Father Peter Dumag

Father Peter Dumag, administrator of St. Theresa Parish in Kihei, will take over the position on July 1 from Father Gary Secor who, as vicar for clergy, has been juggling the job along with a number of other clergy-related tasks.

The diocese’s last full-time director of vocations was Father Patrick Freitas about 13 years ago.

Father Dumag, 41, a priest of the Archdiocese of Nueva Segovia in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, in northern Philippines, has been in Hawaii since March of 2001 as part of a program in which his archdiocese “loans” priests to the Honolulu diocese for few years at a time. He has served on Maui at St. Theresa Church and St. Ann Church in Waihee. He was appointed full-time administrator in Kihei last October.

He is one of nine priests of the Archdiocese of Nueva Segovia working in Hawaii. He will permanently join the Diocese of Honolulu this summer when he and Father Raymund Ellorin, administrator of Sacred Hearts Parish on Lanai, are incardinated on June 8.

Father Dumag, who has a sister in California but no relatives in Hawaii, said that he and Father Ellorin decided to seek incardination in the diocese last September.

Father Dumag said Bishop Silva first asked him if he wanted the position of vocation director in January while together on a plane headed for Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Father Dumag had been the bishop’s companion on a pastoral visit to the Philippine dioceses and religious orders that send priests, brothers and sisters to work in Hawaii.

The priest said he was initially “scared” at the prospect of taking the job and asked for some time to think about it.

He has never done vocation work.

Even after he agreed, he said he still considers the assignment to be a daunting one but is encouraged by the fact that the bishop has made vocations a high priority.

According to Father Secor, the job of a vocations director is threefold — to encourage the awareness of vocations to the religious life, particularly the diocesan priesthood, to guide potential priest candidates through a discernment process, and to supervise the formation of seminarians.

Father Dumag’s office will be in the chancery building downtown. In the resulting reassignment of office space, the three diocesan tribunal offices will move to St. Stephen Diocesan Center.