Capuchin Franciscan Father Paul Minchak
After 44 years of priesthood, almost 30 of which were spent serving in Hawaii, Capuchin Franciscan Father Paul L. Minchak will retire at the same New York City parish where he grew up, attended grade school and was ordained.
The pastor of Resurrection of the Lord Parish in Waipio in central Oahu since 2002 will step down on June 30. He will move to St. Clare Friary on the grounds of Sacred Heart Parish in Yonkers, N.Y.
Father Minchak, 70, said his time in Hawaii “has been a special blessing from God. He has been so good to me.”
“It’s a very, very hard thing to leave,” he told the Hawaii Catholic Herald. “I have too many special memories.”
Vicar general Father Gary Secor said the Islands have been blessed by Father Minchak’s service.
“He has been a valuable member of the clergy in our diocese, and certainly a good pastor,” said Father Secor. “We have been blessed by his ministry here.”
“We wish him all the best,” he said.
Sacred Heart Parish in Yonkers, administered by the Capuchin Franciscans, was Father Minchak’s childhood church and grade school. He joined the Capuchins in 1961, the year he graduated from high school. He made his profession of perpetual vows in 1966 and was ordained on Nov. 8, 1969, at Sacred Hearts Church.
Father Minchak spent his first five years of priesthood in New York as a convent chaplain and a high school history teacher, chaplain and sports director.
In 1975, he was assigned for a year as associate pastor of St. Francis Parish in Yona on Guam, and then returned to the Mainland to be novice master and superior of Capuchin communities in Massachusetts and New York.
He went back to Guam to serve from 1981 to 1984 as a pastor in Chalan Pago.
In 1984 Father Minchak came to Hawaii to be an associate pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Ewa Beach. He served there for 10 years, his last few years as pastor.
For 1994 to 1996, he was assigned as an associate pastor in Tampa, Florida. He then returned to Oahu and served for about two years each at St. Anthony Parish in Kailua, Sacred Heart Parish in Honolulu and Our Lady of Good Counsel in Pearl City before going to Resurrection Parish in 2002.
His fellow Capuchin friar, Father Michel Dalton, pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Ewa, credited Father Minchak and Father George Maddock as the Capuchin “pioneers” whose arrival in 1984 “laid the foundations for the rest of us to be welcomed to the diocese.”
The two priests, the first of their order to come to Hawaii at Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario’s invitation, presented “sterling examples of good parish work,” Father Dalton said.
The Capuchins in Hawaii, who at one time numbered as many as eight, have worked mostly in leeward and windward Oahu parishes. Father Minchak’s departure leaves three, and there are no plans to send a replacement, Father Dalton said. Father Maddock is retired on Guam.
Although Father Minchak leaves his parish on June 30, he will remain in Hawaii through mid-August covering for vacationing priests at Immaculate Conception Parish, Ewa, through July, and at Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish, Pearl City, until Aug. 15.
The retiring Capuchin said that what he will treasure most from his time in Hawaii are “the people that I’ve gotten to know here.”
He said that if he had a final word, it would be “just to say, ‘Thank you.’”
Father Minchak said he hopes to have a fairly active retirement back in New York, helping out parishes where he can. “I don’t want to sit around doing nothing,” he said.
