HCH photo by Anna Weaver
Father Joseph Grimaldi greets well-wishers at a post-Mass reception held in his honor at St. John Vianney Kailua on July 22.
Judicial vicar Father Grimaldi ‘on loan’ to California diocese
By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald
Judicial vicar Father Joseph A. Grimaldi is moving to Santa Cruz, Calif., on July 30 to work as a full-time hospital chaplain. He will be “on loan” to the Diocese of Monterey for three years at the most, he said, while remaining a priest of the Diocese of Honolulu.
“This is a time when I needed a change,” Father Grimaldi, 66, told the Hawaii Catholic Herald last week. “It is a good time to have this change.”
Father Grimaldi will be the “Catholic priest chaplain” at Dominican Hospital, a Catholic medical center in Santa Cruz run by the Adrian Dominican Sisters, and assist on weekends at Star of the Sea Parish, also in Santa Cruz.
As judicial vicar, Father Grimaldi is the chief judge and head of the diocesan Tribunal office which advises the bishop in matters of canon law, or church law, and handles marriage annulment cases.
Bishop Larry Silva said he is working on getting someone from the mainland to replace Father Grimaldi as judicial vicar. According to canon law, a judicial vicar must be a priest with a licentiate of canon law degree. Hawaii does not have another qualified candidate for the position.
New-York City-born Father Grimaldi, who turns 67 on Sept. 1, first came to Hawaii as a Christian Brother in 1974 to be the principal of Damien Memorial High School.
He left the order in the late 1980s to study for the diocesan priesthood. He was ordained by Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario for the Diocese of Honolulu on Aug. 4, the Feast of St. John Vianney, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa in Honolulu.
After short pastoral assignments at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Pearl City and Our Lady of the Mount Church in Kalihi Valley, he was named pastor of St. John Vianney Parish in Kailua in 1991.
He served in Kailua for five years before heading to Rome from 1996 to 1998 to study canon law. Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo appointed him judicial vicar in 1998 and vicar general, with Father Thomas Gross, in 1999. Bishop Silva also appointed Fathers Grimaldi and Gross as vicars general for a short period after he was ordained bishop in 2005.
Father Grimaldi was pastor of Sacred Hearts Parish, Punahou, and St. Pius X Parish in Manoa from Feb. 1 to Dec. 31, 2006. He returned to full-time Tribunal work this year.