It took more than pleading to get the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to come to Hawaii. There was also some conscience tugging involved. Hawaii’s Bishop Stephen Alencastre’s 1936 cabled entreaty to the mother superior general in St. Louis, Mo., for “at least six” sisters ended with this guilt-inducing conclusion: “Otherwise obliged to close school.”
It was the bishop’s second try. An earlier request for 12 sisters was countered with Mother Rose Columba McGinness’ polite response: “Appreciate offer. Regret inability to accept.”
Bishop Alencastre’s second attempt resulted in the mother general’s willingness to “put off a little from the shore,” Jesus’ lakeside suggestion to a weary Peter, luckless after a night of fishing.
But Hawaii was 2,000 open ocean miles “from the shore.” It would be the longest missionary leap for the Sisters of St. Joseph since the congregation had come over to the United States from France a full century earlier.
Hawaii’s Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet on retreat at the St. Anthony Retreat Center in Kalihi on March 9. (Photo By Darlene Dela Cruz)
Nevertheless, Mother Rose Columba, accompanied by Mother Mary Killian Corbett, the superior of the sisters’ Los Angeles region, took a five-day exploratory visit to the Islands to check out the situation.
The result was a happy one for the bishop, resulting in one of the last of his many significant contributions to the church in Hawaii. He died two years later.
The two mothers superior split the difference between Bishop Alencastre’s first and second requests and sent nine sisters.
They arrived 75 years ago this month on Aug. 24, 1938, on the U.S. Lurline.
They ranged in age from 21 to 58. From the St. Louis province were the superior Sister Mary Virginia Becker, the assistant superior Sister Mary Zenaide Belanger, Sister Mary Felix Jochem, Sister Frances Celine Leahy and Sister Alice Josephine Tornovich.
From Los Angeles were Sister Mary Faber Van der Werf, Sister Adele Marie Lemon, Sister Mary Anne Bahner and Sister Ann Patrice O’Connor.
The school in question that the desperate bishop had threatened to close was St. Theresa on School Street in Honolulu.
The first group of nine Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet on board the Lurline just before their arrival in Honolulu on Aug. 24, 1938.
A happy aloha
“What a happy Aloha was ours!” wrote Sister Adele Marie, recalling their morning arrival at Honolulu’s Pier 11 as the clock on the Aloha Tower marked 10 minutes to nine.
According to the late Sister Kathleen Marie Shields’s recounting of the historic day in her 2004 book “Aloha Ke Akua,” the sisters were met by a “waving crowd of aloha.” Disembarking, they together received nearly 100 leis.
The sisters were identically dressed in their hardly tropical-friendly habits with thick pleats, deep pockets, ample sleeves and draping veil, kept in check with straight pins, jet black from head-to-toe except for a white coronet framing the face and a large stiff white bib. Their only adornments were the black profession crucifix and the black rosary hanging from the knotted black cincture.
The new arrivals were accompanied by their future pastor Sacred Hearts Fathers Athanasius Bous and the vice-provincial of the Hawaii mission Sacred Hearts Father Valentine Francks as they were driven down Bishop Street, past the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, turning left on School Street for the few final blocks to St. Theresa School.
Waiting for them was a new two-story cream-colored convent, built in the previous three weeks. Upon inspection, Mother Mary Virginia described it as “quite perfect.”
St. Theresa School, one of the largest in the mission, had opened in 1931 under the direction of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. But rapidly increasing enrollment in their other schools had forced them to leave St. Theresa, prompting Bishop Alencastre’s call for the Sisters of St. Joseph.
On Sept. 1, a mere eight days after the sisters arrived, the school year opened for 730 students, kindergarten through grade nine, representing the wide ethnic diversity of Honolulu’s working class.
According to Sister Kathleen Marie, “the faculty of eight sisters and four young women found their greatest challenge in their combined efforts to pronounce and to spell correctly the names of the children.”
The sisters’ quick success prompted Bishop Alencastre a few months later to ask for more of them, this time to run Holy Rosary Parish in Paia, Maui.
On July 19, 1939, Mother Rose Columba sent from the St. Louis Province Mother Mary Albert Carroll, Sister Carlotta Whitmore and Sister Julienne Fennerty. On Aug. 2, Sister Miriam Ruth Karl also arrived from St. Louis.
Sister Alice Josephine Tornovich, one of the original group, moved from St. Theresa to Holy Rosary and a year later Sister Jerome Mulligan also joined them.
In the summer of 1941, the year the Diocese of Honolulu was established, the sisters briefly branched off to Kauai at the invitation of Sacred Hearts Father Walter Mutsaarts to teach catechism classes there. Sister Zenaide, Sister Mary Faber and Sister Adele Marie, the first religious women to work on Kauai, taught 30 adults and 200 children in catechetical centers set up in Eleele, Kekaha and New Mill Plantation.
World War II
Three sisters were caught out in the open when the Japanese bombs started falling and the bullets started flying on Dec. 7, 1941. It was Sunday morning and Sister Frances Celine, Sister Martha Mary and Sister Adele Marie were in a car on their way to Schofield Barracks to teach weekly religion classes. They made it to the base chapel. There they celebrated Mass to the thunder of the opening salvos of World War II. On the way back to Honolulu they were forced to take cover in a cane field.
The war years found the sisters on Oahu and Maui broadening their ministry to include praying with parishioners, offering hospitality to servicemen, writing letters to their anxious families on the mainland, and taking turns before the Blessed Sacrament in evening adoration.
World War II was a pivot for the Catholic Church in Hawaii, from its final days as a mission of the Sacred Hearts Order into the post-war boom of a new emerging American diocese. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet were there, contributing greatly in the transition.
Before the war, besides their two schools, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet provided a good portion of the teaching power in parish catechism classes across Oahu. In 1939 they began teaching at St. Agnes, Kakaako; Our Lady of Sorrows, Wahiawa; St. Joseph, Waipahu; and Sacred Heart, Waianae. In 1940, they started at Our Lady of the Mount in Kalihi Valley.
In 1942, they began at St. Philomena in Damon Tract; and in 1945, at Immaculate Conception in Ewa.
By 1958, a dozen years after the Japanese surrender, the sisters at St. Joseph School, Waipahu, were teaching religion to nearly 900 public school children. By 1961, the sisters at St. Anthony School, Kailua, together with 37 trained catechists, provided religious instruction for more than 1,100 public school children.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet ended up running a total of six Catholic schools in Hawaii — two on Maui and four on Oahu — and brought their educational skills to at least seven more.
Here are the schools they administered and the year they started.
- St. Theresa, Honolulu: 1938
- Holy Rosary, Paia: 1939
- St. Joseph, Waipahu: 1946
- St. Anthony, Kailua: 1952
- Christ the King, Kahului: 1955
- Holy Trinity, Honolulu: 1965
The Sisters of St. Joseph, at one time or another, could also be found on the faculties of St. Anthony Grade School and St Anthony Junior-Senior High School in Wailuku; Star of the Sea, Honolulu; St. Patrick, Honolulu; Sacred Hearts Academy, Damien Memorial School and Chaminade University.
With the Hawaii community’s numbers and assignments growing, it was elevated to the status of vice province in 1965, and longtime teacher Sister Regina Catherine Brandt was named vice provincial.
From the late 1960s, the Hawaii congregation expanded its horizons sending sisters to mission in Peru, the Marshal Islands, Johnston Atoll, Christmas Island, Chile, Samoa and Japan. Back in Hawaii, some also found assignments on Lanai and the Big Island.
Outside the classroom, the work has been varied and diverse. The sisters have lived among and advocated for the poor, volunteered in homeless shelters, worked in communications, catechetics and counseling and have ministered to the sick, the imprisoned, the elderly and the homebound. They have served in parishes as religious educators, eucharistic ministers, lectors, choir directors, RCIA team leaders and outreach coordinators.
Today, advancing age has added for some Hawaii sisters a ministry of “prayer and witness,” while others have welcomed the responsibility of caregiver for their elderly companions.
Hawaii is home for 25 Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, while two more members of the vice province live on the Mainland.
CSJ Ohana
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the CSJ Ohana, a group of laity who share in the spirituality and collaborate in the ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. On May 1, 1988, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, after the sisters and friends had developed a formation plan and a statement of responsibilities, the first Ohana members, all on Oahu, made their commitment.
Two years later, more members joined from Maui. “Prayer partners” were also added.
The CSJ Ohana harken back to an earlier time and another lay group called The Carondelet Guild, founded by the sisters and their parents in 1968 to assist the sisters financially and materially, especially in the areas of education and retirement. The Guild was discontinued in 1973.
For 75 years, as educational leaders and missionaries, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, helped shape the modern church in Hawaii educating and ministering to three generations of Catholics. In the process, they also attracted many local women to the religious life.
Although their work has changed and lessened over the years, their mission is not diminished, said Sister Claudia Wong, director of the congregation in Hawaii.
“As Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, we are called to unifying love that impels us to manifest Jesus in our world today as we work for right relationships among all people,” she said.
“Over the past 75 years, we continue to reach out and receive from the people of God, our call to minister to those whose lives we touch each day. And as the congregation of the great love of God, our loving presence and prayers will transform a world in need of healing and hope, especially in our Hawaii nei.”
