“I have had the opportunity to serve the most wonderful people I could have ever hoped to serve. And this was in a very special place in the world during very challenging and exciting times. For this I am most grateful. I will leave office with so many prized memories. The people of Hawaii have been most gracious and loving; the church in Hawaii is alive and active and making a difference in our community. I have a deep sense of pride in our people.”
{Statement by Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario on his retirement, Oct. 12, 1993}
1926-2003
Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario: servant and shepherd in the spirit of Vatican II
By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald
Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario, who as the third bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu brought the spirit of the Second Vatican Council to full flower in Hawaii, died Friday night, Dec. 12, at St. Francis Medical Center in Honolulu. He was the diocesan bishop from 1982 to 1993. He had been a priest for 52 years and a bishop for 25 years. He was 77.
“I lost a very dear friend in Bishop Joseph Ferrario,” Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo said.
Originally ordained for the Diocese of Scranton in Pennsylvania, Bishop Ferrario’s five decades of priestly ministry was spent almost entirely in Hawaii. His service included teaching, administration, fund raising, parish work, ecumenism, social outreach and 11 years of vigorous and impassioned episcopal leadership.
A quiet and serenely cheerful man, his deep love for the church was expressed with an inner zeal, unwavering loyalty and hard work.
Bishop Ferrario embraced the Second Vatican Council as a gift of the Holy Spirit and sought to bring to fruition its liturgical revival and ecumenical promise.
He defended the church and Catholic teaching against those who would deny its relevance or distort its truths.
He trusted in God’s providence and believed he had been a fortunate beneficiary of it. “I’ve really been blessed in the opportunities that I’ve had,” he said two years ago, while reflecting on his 50th anniversary of ordination.
“My grace is all you need,” was his episcopal motto.
Bishop Ferrario entered Castle Hospital’s emergency room in Kailua at around 5 p.m., Dec. 12, after experiencing chest pains at his Kailua home. Bishop DiLorenzo and a few friends were called to his bedside. According to Bishop DiLorenzo, who administered the anointing of the sick, Bishop Ferrario was conscious and alert and in relatively little pain.
However, his vital signs worsened and he was transferred by ambulance to St. Francis Medical Center, where Bishop DiLorenzo and the others again joined him. He died in the intensive care unit at approximately 10:25 p.m.
Bishop Ferrario had had quadruple bypass surgery in 1992, and had been in relatively good health since the operation. He had visited his Augustine Educational Foundation office at St. Stephen Diocesan Center the day he died, according to foundation director Sue Ferandin. The day before, he had joined about 50 diocesan workers at their annual Christmas luncheon at the diocesan center.
Intrigued by the priesthood
Bishop Ferrario was born on March 3, 1926, in Scranton, the second of three sons of the late Angelo and Angelina Mangione Ferrario.
He attended Scranton public schools and was expected to follow in his father’s paint and wallpaper business. However, a casual visit to a junior college seminary suggested a different path. Intrigued by the priesthood, he entered the diocesan minor seminary much to the surprise of his parents.
In the seminary, Ferrario was educated by the Sulpicians, a society of priests which trains future parish clergy.
Attracted by their mission and love of parish priests, he joined the Sulpicians after his ordination on May 19, 1951, in St. Peter Cathedral in Scranton.
His first assignment was St. Joseph Seminary, Mountain View, Calif., where he taught math, Greek and reading for six years.
Father Ferrario came to St. Stephen Seminary in Kaneohe in 1957.
“I immediately fell in love with the place,” the bishop recalled two years ago. “I have never found anything that could match it.”
For nine years at St. Stephen, Father Ferrario taught Greek, math, and English. It was the seminary’s heyday -- new dormitories and classrooms were being constructed and enrollment for the four years of high school and two years of college peaked in the early 1960s at 72 students.
In 1966, Father Ferrario left the Sulpicians and was incardinated a priest of the Diocese of Honolulu.
For the next eight years, he worked in a series of diocesan administrative positions. He served as Bishop John J. Scanlan’s personal secretary, headed the Diocesan Liturgical Commission, and from 1968 to 1971, ran Project Hawaii, a $3.5 million diocesan fund-raising campaign, the first of its kind in the diocese.
Father Ferrario also served as diocesan Director of Vocations, president of the Priests’ Senate, and director of the Catholic Youth Organization. The CYO, encompassing at the time the Department of Religious Education, flourished under his tenure. Hundreds of children attended summer fun and camping programs during the 1970s. For many Hawaii high school students, its Search retreat program became the foremost spiritual experience of their teen years.
Father Ferrario was named pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Kuliouou in east Honolulu in 1973. It was his first parish assignment. Two years later he was appointed pastor of St. Anthony in Kailua.
Bishop of Honolulu
On Nov. 8, 1977, the Pope Paul VI chose Father Ferrario to be auxiliary bishop to Bishop Scanlan. Ordained on Jan. 13, 1978, he left St. Anthony Parish to reside at St. Stephen Diocesan Center and work at the chancery as Bishop Scanlan’s assistant and vicar general.
With Bishop Scanlan’s retirement in 1982, Bishop Ferrario was named by Pope John Paul II as the third diocesan Bishop of Honolulu. He was installed on June 29, 1982, at the Neal Blaisdell Center.
The three themes of his installation speech -- “outreach,” “unity” and “renewal” -- spelled out the central message and mission of his administration.
OUR (outreach, unity, renewal) church “really grabbled hold,” the bishop said later. “People had a sense that it was indeed OUR Church. It was evident in the way liturgy developed, and the way stewardship caught on, and how religious education progressed.”
The new bishop, at age 56, began a flurry of activity. He visited every parish, established seven vicariates, and created new commissions for justice and peace, communications, youth, family life, and ecumenism.
He introduced a new two-year confirmation preparation program and formally established the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, or RCIA, as the process by which adults are brought into the church.
He wrote numerous pastoral letters. The topics were posture at Mass, Mass stipends for priests, parish membership, AIDS, the Eucharist and eucharistic devotion, vocations, Catholic social teaching and holy days of obligation.
He radically reorganized Catholic Charities, opened diocesan offices for communications, family life and youth ministry, established the Augustine Educational Foundation, launched a five-year parish renewal plan, and commissioned in-depth studies on diocesan demographics and Catholic schools.
He established St. Jude Parish in Makakilo and Resurrection of the Lord Parish in Waipio-Gentry and rededicated St. Theresa Church as a co-cathedral.
In 11-and-a-half years years, he ordained 22 priests.
Nationally, he served on the Board of Governors of the Pontifical North American College, and was a member of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committees on permanent diaconate, liturgy and charismatic renewal.
Bishop Ferrario was drawn into several high profile controversies during his administration.
Planned Parenthood of Hawaii’s attempt to establish an abortion clinic in its office overlooking the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace drew his ire. The building was situated partially on church land and the extended legal battle was front-page news for weeks. Although Planned Parenthood eventually won the right to perform abortions, they soon moved away to another location.
The bishop was also the victim of charges of sexual abuse, which the Vatican investigated and found to be groundless.
His plan to sell St. Augustine Church in Waikiki, which he viewed as an act of conscientious stewardship of church property, was met with heated public debate and was eventually rejected by the Vatican.
Retirement
The strain of a busy and active administration of 11-and-a-half years took its physical toll. In January of 1992, Bishop Ferrario underwent quintuple bypass surgery. “I began to realize what stress does to a person,” he said.
Within a year of his surgery, and after some deep personal reflection, the bishop decided it was time to retire or suffer the consequences. The pope accepted his letter of resignation and on Oct. 12, 1993, Bishop Ferrario left the Diocese of Honolulu in the hands of fellow Pennsylvanian Bishop DiLorenzo.
He retired to a modest house next door to St. Anthony Parish in Kailua where he helped out on a regular basis.
Bishop DiLorenzo appointed him first vice-president and CEO of the Augustine Educational Foundation, a job that kept him busy about 20 hours a week at St. Stephen Diocesan Center.