Above, Father Mafi on the far right of a photo of Father Johnathan Hurrell’s extended family visiting from New Zealand and Tonga for this ordination in St. Patrick Church in Kaimuki in 2005. Right, Bishop Soane Mafi during a pastoral visit to Hawaii’s Tongan Catholic Communities in 2011. (HCH file photos)
When Tonga’s future cardinal came to Hawaii as a priest in 2005 for the ordination of his cousin Sacred Hearts Father Johnathan Hurrell, one of the Tongan Catholic women hosting him wanted to buy him a pair of shoes. Father Soane Patita Paini Mafi politely turned down the offer, preferring instead the sandals he was already wearing.
A few years later, now-Bishop Soane Mafi again visited Hawaii and Father Hurrell invited him to his parish in Waialua where he was parochial vicar. Celebrating a weekday Mass together, Father Hurrell was unsure of the protocol of concelebrating with a bishop. Bishop Mafi put him at ease.
“He told me that he would be my altar server,” the priest said, “and he did. The small weekday congregation was delighted.”
“He’s a simple man,” Father Hurrell said. “Very humble.”
Father Hurrell, who is now the provincial superior of his congregation, spoke to his cousin shortly after Pope Francis’ Jan. 4 announcement that he would be among the church’s newest group of cardinals. He said the bishop told him he was awakened that day at 4 a.m. by his brother in San Francisco who gave him the exciting news.
According to Father Hurrell, Bishop Mafi told his brother that he was mistaken and went back to sleep.
In the morning, discovering that his brother was correct, he “quietly cried,” Father Hurrell said.
“He’s very warm, genuine, very real,” he said.
Bishop Mafi’s father and Father Hurrell’s grandmother are brother and sister, making the cardinal-designate a first cousin of Father Hurrell’s father, and the “first cousin once removed” of Father Hurrell.
Father Hurrell, himself a quarter Tongan plus a mix of European nationalities and Chinese, was born in New Zealand but spent about 15 years of his youth in Tonga.
Father Hurrell said that he and the future cardinal, who is four years older and one of five brothers and one sister, grew up together and were probably considered the least likely in the family to become priests. “We were the most rascal of the kids,” he said.
As a bishop, Father Hurrell said his cousin “is encouraging, supportive and a mighty preacher.”
He also has a great sense of humor.
“He loves to laugh,” the Sacred Hearts priest said.
Bishop Mafi was born in the Tongan capitol of Nuku’alofa on Dec. 19, 1961, the son and grandson of catechists. According to a recent Catholic News Service story, he joined a parish youth group growing up in the settlement of Kolofo’ou, near the capital, on the main island of Tongatapu.
He studied at the Pacific Regional Seminary in Suva, Fiji.
Ordained a priest on June 29, 1991, he spent four years at Ha’apai parish on an outer island. In 1995, he became vicar general.
In an interview with Catholic San Francisco in 2008, Bishop Mafi said his bishop sent him for three years of study at then-Loyola College in Baltimore. After he graduated in 2000, he returned to Fiji to join a formation team training local priests.
Father Mafi was named coadjutor (successor) bishop of Tonga on Oct. 4, 2007, and Bishop of Tonga and Niue on April 18, 2008, the first Tongan diocesan priest to be named a bishop.
He told Catholic San Francisco that, at the time, he was both eager and apprehensive about being the bishop, “because I want to be myself.
“It’s kind of a mixed feeling, excited but at the same time overwhelming,” he said. “Now I belong to everybody.”
He will be elevated to the rank of cardinal, a first for Tonga, by Pope Francis at a consistory at the Vatican on Feb. 14.
Father Hurrell said he believes the message the pope is giving with this choice was that “the little ones matter.”
Pope Francis picked a second Pacific island churchman to become a cardinal next month, Archbishop John Dew of Wellington, New Zealand.
In a statement, Cardinal-designate Dew said he was delighted that Bishop Mafi also had been named.
“Together it is not only great news for New Zealand and Tonga, but for the Oceania region,” he said.
“Although we are geographically far from much of the world, Pope Francis has gone to the periphery of the world to name new cardinals,” Archbishop Dew said.
The Tongan bishop is the current president of CEPAC, the Episcopal Conference of the Pacific. “He is very well respected by his brother bishops,” said Father Hurrell.
With only about 15,000 Catholics, the Diocese of Tonga is the size of some American parishes. At 53, Bishop Mafi will be the youngest of the 120-plus-member college of cardinals.
Tonga is a constitutional monarchy made up of 176 islands, of which about 50 are inhabited, spread across 270,000 square miles of ocean. The people speak Tongan and English.
The country lies about 3,000 miles southwest of Hawaii.
In 2012, Bishop Mafi invited the Sacred Hearts Fathers and Brothers to send missionaries to Tonga. Hawaii-born Father Clyde Guerreiro and several other Sacred Hearts priests set up a mission in Nuku’alofa in 2013.
“It’s about a 6-7-hour plane ride” from Hawaii, Father Guerreiro told the Hawaii Catholic Herald in an interview two years ago. “You can’t go directly. You have to go through Fiji or go to New Zealand and ‘backpaddle.’”
He described Nuku’alofa as an “overgrown Kaunakakai” or a “smaller Lihue.”
The country’s prominent religion is Protestant. Catholics make up around 13 percent of the population.
Sacred Hearts Father Lane Akiona, chaplain for Hawaii’s 150-200-member Tongan Catholic Community, said the group was “surprised” and “very happy” at the unexpected appointment.
Many of Hawaii’s Tongan Catholic’s know the bishop personally, he said. “This is a high honor for them.”
Father Akiona, who is pastor of St. Augustine Church in Waikiki where Tongan Catholics celebrate a weekly Sunday Mass, described the cardinal-designate as “down to earth” and “humble.”
In 2011, for a few weeks in May and June, Bishop Mafi and three staff members paid a pastoral visit to Tongan Catholics on Kauai, the Big Island, Maui and Oahu.
