Sharon Chiarucci in the chapel at St. Stephen Diocesan Center on Nov. 25. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
When it comes to Hawaii parishes, Sharon Chiarucci has seen it all. She is one of the few people who have actually been in every one of the nearly 100 Catholic churches in the state (except for one isolated mission tucked away off a west Maui backroad). She has seen priests and bishops come and go. She has seen parishes open and close, merge and separate. She has talked with thousands of parishioners.
As the director of the Office of Parish Resources, this has been her assignment. It has also been her privilege.
“Getting out to all the parishes and seeing people from one end of the state to the other has been one of the greatest gifts of this job,” she said.
Chiarucci is retiring at the end of this year after working for the church in a variety of ways for more than 30 years, mostly behind the scenes — encouraging, facilitating, guiding, smoothing paths, planting seeds.
Talking with the Hawaii Catholic Herald last week about her ministry, her face scrunches in disapproval when she’s asked to list her “accomplishments.”
“Contributions,” she said, correcting the questioner.
As unpretentious as her demeanor is her office at St. Stephen Diocesan Center. Hers is a one-person department. No secretary, no staff. Her workplace is small, spare and oddly narrow, about 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep. Besides her computer desk, she has a couple of bookcases, two black metal file cabinets and a credenza.
Nearly every book on her shelves has “parish” in its title: “Hands-on Parish,” “Emerging Parish,” “Parishes that Excel,” “Parishes of the Next Millennium.”
San Francisco to Kauai
Chiarucci is originally from San Francisco where she attended Catholic schools “all the way through college” at the Jesuit University of San Francisco, majoring in sociology. Five of those years, right after high school, were spent as a Sister of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was the post-Second Vatican Council ’60s, a time of flux, within and outside the church.
When she left the confines of religious life where she had relished the exciting changes coming from Rome, she discovered outside a dull church, “behind the times,” unenthusiastic about renewal. Disheartened, she left the church altogether.
She worked a few years for the state of California, then took a vacation with friends who lived on Kauai.
“I fell in love with the island. I went back (home) and said, ‘I’m moving.’”
On Kauai, she found a job as a program director and counselor with Hale Opio, a non-profit group home for delinquent teens. She worked there from 1975 to 1982.
“I was not at all involved with the church at that time,” she said of a spiritual hiatus that had stretched to about 15 years.
But God figured that was long enough, she said.
“I was out walking one Sunday and I had been toying with this idea” about returning to church.
“I told God, ‘I know you are there. I just don’t have time for you right now.’ And God said, ‘OK, I’m tired of waiting, you’re coming back.’”
God had the timing figured out. Chiarucci returned to church at Immaculate Conception in Lihue on the day a new pastor was being introduced by the outgoing one. Two memories stuck with her from that day. The first was the image of the “old guard,” a veteran Belgian missionary, “turning the parish over to a new young priest,” a local-born vocation “who wanted to see the parish thrive.”
The second memory was of the church choir – a group of senior citizens with “quavery voices” accompanied by a “quavery” violin and mandolin.
“And I sat there and said if God can have a sense of humor about this choir, I can have a sense of humor about his church.”
“I was hooked,” Chiarucci said. “Within a year I was working for the parish.”
First church job
After volunteering for six months, she asked the young pastor, Sacred Hearts Father James Anguay, to hire her. He was reluctant at first.
“He told me, ‘If I hired you what would I do?’”
As it turned out, both had plenty to do.
“Within a year, he really mobilized that parish,” Chiarucci said. “He had over a hundred people involved in ministry.”
Father Anguay brought in the Parish Renewal Experience, a program designed to rejuvenate parish life. “It set that parish on fire.”
Chiarucci’s faith was ignited when she attended an RCIA training program on Oahu.
“I started reading everything I could get my hands on,” she said. “It was just trying to catch up with all the changes since Vatican II because I missed out on all that as it unfolded.”
She came to realize that the church in Hawaii was liturgically “so far ahead of the game,” thanks to then Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario’s “love for and emphasis on the liturgy.”
She moved in 1988 to Oahu where vicar general Father Clarence Liu gave Chiarucci her first diocese-level job as administrative coordinator of the Diocesan Renewal Committee. She had worked with Father Liu earlier as a member of that committee, which had been created to assist parishes in planning and renewal. Now Bishop Ferrario wanted to give that effort the support and guidance of a full-time diocesan staff person.
“The theme was that renewal can happen through planning,” she said. “The idea was to get parishes to look at their strengths and their weaknesses and through some visioning — where would they like to be five years from now — put a program in place to move in that direction.”
But the office never reached its full potential and, because of a shortage of diocesan funds and other issues, it closed after two and a half years.
So Chiarucci worked for Star of the Sea Parish for three months, then took a year off before landing a position in 1991 with the Jesuit-run Newman Center at the University of Hawaii.
“That was a great job,” she said.
She was learning a lot about lay people in parish administration. “It was new and it was challenging,” she said.
After about two years at Newman, Chiarucci got a call from Tom Dinell, the director of Catholic Charities at the time, who asked her if she would like to take over the office of Oahu Social Ministry.
Bishop Ferrario’s “Faith in Action” conference and pastoral letter had “mobilized the diocese for a more concerted effort in social ministry,” Chiarucci said.
Catholic Charities provided professional social services while the offices for social ministry on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island helped outreach efforts to the poor on the parish level. Chiarucci was back to helping parishes.
Office of Welcoming Parish
Chiariucci’s job changed again in 1997 when Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, by then at the helm of the diocese for about three years, asked her to create a new office that would help him make the most of his official visits to parishes.
The office took the substance of parish planning and renewal efforts and added an emphasis of hospitality and openness. Bishop DiLorenzo called it the Office of Welcoming Parish.
Chiarucci would coordinate the bishop’s weekend visits to parishes, facilitate discussions with parish leaders and parishioners about the parish’s strengths and challenges, and help them draft future goals. The visits also included liturgies and social gatherings with the bishop.
It was a job in which Chiarucci found much satisfaction.
“That was a great opportunity. Getting out to all the parishes and seeing people from one end of the state to the other has been one of the greatest gifts of this job,” she said.
It was a blessing “seeing the vitality of parishes all over this diocese, in spite of any problems they may be encountering, whether it was financial or leadership issues, whatever it might be.”
The only church she has not seen personally is St. Francis Xavier, a tiny mission in the remote district of Kahakuloa, where Mass is celebrated only on special occasions.
“People love their parish,” she said. “No matter what. There’s a bond there.”
“But there is also a lot of hurt out there and a frustration over the challenges,” she said.
“I think the rapid turnover of priests has been really difficult for many parishes,” she said.
It’s an issue that the Diocesan Pastoral Council, one of the bishop’s advisory groups which Chiarucci helps staff, attempted to address by creating a detailed “pastor transition process.”
“It’s a process that has great potential” but only mixed results so far, she said.
New bishop, new emphasis
Bishop Larry Silva put his own stamp on the Welcoming Parish Office, including changing the name to the Office for Parish Resources.
Chiarucci continued to help the parish visitation process, which gained a slight shift in tone. Rather than asking parishes to assess their strengths and weaknesses, the bishop posed more positive questions: “What are you grateful for and what are your hopes for the future?”
“He got people to stop navel gazing and really look out and see we are not here just for ourselves,” she said.
“That’s been his message. We are not just consumers of the faith, we should be the teachers of it,” Chiarucci said. “I think we are still struggling with how that plays out.”
She is heartened that more parishes are putting more effort into enriching their faith than trying to “fix” things.
“They get it very easily with the finances and with the facilities, but when you start talking about planning for programs, for spirituality, for education — that’s a little bit more of a struggle.”
“I think many parishes have a stronger sense of the importance of faith formation,” she said. “I think there is a hunger for a deepening of the spirituality that is both a strength and a challenge — and an opportunity.”
She sees more diocesan departments “getting out there into the parishes,” providing encouragement and expertise to satisfy these needs.
Her office has provided spiritual retreats for parish leaders, some in collaboration with the offices for social ministry and religious education, which have been much appreciated.
Chiarucci’s contributions include new parish council guidelines, developed with a “great team” of about 10 people. The document has been well-received.
People appreciated its “spirituality” and “pastoral perspective,” she said.
She has been trying to instill in pastoral councils the “importance of prayer, the importance of having periodic retreats on their own.”
“More and more parishes are doing that,” she said.
While Chiarucci’s focus has primarily been “empowering lay people,” she said she has had “wonderful collaborations with many of the priests.”
“I feel for them and think they’ve been put into a difficult situation and get blamed for a lot of situations that are beyond even their control.”
“I think I may sometimes come across as hard on our clergy but I do have a lot of respect for most of them — and have truly enjoyed working with many of them,” she said.
Retirement plans
Chiarucci, who lives in Ahuimanu past Kaneohe and attends Newman Center/Holy Spirit Parish, does not have any specific plans for retirement other than to spend more time with her family and maybe do a little traveling, perhaps to Italy.
But she has stopped worrying about how she is going to keep busy.
“I look back on my life and I realize that every job that I’ve had has been a gift. They just sort of come to me. And I think if God has been watching out for me that way, why would I think it is going to stop?”
