Undated photo of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet at Holy Rosary Parish, Paia, Maui.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet came to Maui 75 years ago, in the summer of 1939.
Arriving on July 19 were Sister Mary Albert Carroll from California, and Sister Julienne Fennerty and Sister Carlotta Whitmore from St. Louis. Sister Miriam Ruth Karl and Sister Alice Josephine Tornovish, also from St. Louis, arrived on Aug. 2. These original five were assigned to Holy Rosary Parish School on Baldwin Avenue in the historic plantation town of Paia. The next year, Sister Jerome Mulligan arrived from St. Louis.
That first year, the school had 160 children, mostly of Portuguese ancestry. By 1949, Holy Rosary’s enrollment had exploded to 450.
In 1955, Sacred Hearts Father Joseph Putman, the pastor at Christ the King Church in Kahului, Maui, who had been the pastor at Holy Rosary, invited the Sisters of St. Joseph to run the new four-classroom school at Christ the King. This request came around the time the plantation families in Paia had been informed by HC&S Sugar Company, a subsidiary of Alexander and Baldwin, that they were being relocated to a new “Dream City” in Kahului town by the end of 1962.
The sisters agreed to Father Putman’s request and in September of 1955, opened the doors of Christ the King School to eager students in grades one through four. The sisters, who in those days were not allowed to drive, were taken back and forth from Paia to Kahului every day by a team of volunteer parents.
In 1961, the sisters decided to transport the entire convent to Christ the King. Sniffen’s Trucking Company of Kahului moved the house in three parts on flatbed-trucks in the dead of night along HC&S’s private tournahauler roads. As old-timers tell it, a caravan of cars and trucks provided “headlights” on both sides of the trucks.
(Rumor has it that the historic move was recorded on 8-millimeter film. The sisters would love to have a copy of that movie, or any pictures of the event, for their archives. If you were part of that caravan, please contact Sister Roselani Enomoto at roselani.enomoto@gmail.com.)
It took about a year to reassemble and resettle the convent on Kaulawahine Street on the corner of Christ the King School property. During that final year of Holy Rosary School, four sisters lived with the Maryknoll Sisters at the Children’s Home up the street from the school. The other four at Christ the King rented a house in Hale Nanea.
Christ the King grew into a full elementary school. Its first class of first graders graduated in 1963. Sister Margaret Louise Vanderbush was the principal then. The Sisters of St. Joseph were the principals and teachers at Christ the King from 1961 to 1990. Through those years they empowered the leadership of lay teachers and administrators, who ran the school from 1990 until it closed in 2010, and was reconfigured as a preschool. Three Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet remained as tutors, volunteers and mentors until the school’s closing.
Another landmark year
1968 was another landmark year for the Sisters of St. Joseph on Maui when they were asked to teach at St. Anthony Junior-Senior High School in Wailuku. Sister Miriam Shea, Sister Sheila Sullivan and Sister Helen Janssen from St. Paul and Sister Jane Rudden from St. Louis answered the call.
The congregation has been at the school ever since, teaching everything from history to drama to AP math to religious studies. They have also served as counselors, dean of students, curriculum advisors, business office clerks, librarians, department chairs and assistants to principals.
Today, Sister Sara Sanders is the remaining Sister of St. Joseph on the high school staff and Sister Eva Joseph Mesina serves as the religious education director at St. Anthony Parish.
Other sisters who served in Catholic education on Maui include Sister Margaret Leonard Perreira and Sister Margie Edic who worked as a principal and teacher, respectively, at St. Anthony Grade School in Wailuku in the 1980s. Sister Angie Laurenzo taught sixth grade there for three years in the early 1990s before receiving her present assignment as coordinator of religious education at Christ the King Parish.
In 1987, at the request of the pastor and parishioners of Sacred Hearts Parish on Lanai, Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario invited the congregation to send a sister to that island for a year to help organize youth ministry, parish home visits and outreach work, catechist training, liturgical ministries and internal and external communications. The congregation sent two, Sister Marcie Felipe and Sister Nadine Schafer who established the new mission, Hale Malia, House of Mary, on Aug. 27, 1987. Sister Julia Marie Acain was sent the following year to replace the ailing Sister Nadine. The Lanai mission ended in June of 1990.
Bishop Ferrario appointed Sister Roselani Enomoto in 1993 as director of the Maui Vicariate Office for Social Ministry to help the county’s parishes fulfill his goals of outreach, unity and renewal. She served in that position until her retirement in 2010. Sister Roselani continues to live in community with the sisters on Maui, where she ministers to the elderly residents of Hale Makua and other homes.
In 1994, Sister Joan Goulden from California joined the sisters’ Hale Iokepa Community in Waihee to help Sister Roselani in the Office for Social Ministry and serve as part-time RCIA director in St. Ann Parish, Waihee. Two years later, she joined the staff of the Maui Food Bank. In 1999, Sister Joan moved to Oahu to be the librarian at St. Theresa School. She is now the archivist for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Hawaii.
The CSJ Ohana is an association of Hawaii lay people called to be “companions on the journey” with the sisters. This year marks its 25th anniversary. The Ohana offers a program of formation about the history, charism and ministries of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and opportunities to experience being in communion with God, one another and all of creation. Anyone interested in joining the group may contact any sister or Ohana member.
The Hawaii Vice Province of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and their lay association, the CSJ Ohana, is celebrating their 75th anniversary of ministry on Maui on May 3 at Holy Rosary Church in Paia where the sisters were first assigned in 1939.
The celebration begins with a Mass of Thanksgiving at 10 a.m. presided over by Msgr. Terrence Watanabe followed by luncheon/paina until 3 p.m.
The event will also observe the 60th year of Sister Catherine Acain’s consecrated religious life and 25th year of the CSJ Ohana.
For information, contact Sister Eva Mesina, 359-1823, ejmesina@hotmail.com; or Yolanda Dumalanta, 269-2970, ydumalanta@gmail.com.
