Linda Cacpal was a lay person, a retired state employee, a convert, a parish minister with a love for the church so total that the bishop was moved to preside at her funeral.
“This dear sister of ours dedicated her life to God completely,” Bishop Larry Silva told those who came to say goodbye to their friend in Christ, Jan. 12, at St. Elizabeth Church in Aiea. Eight priests concelebrated. Three deacons assisted.
Cacpal died on the day after Christmas in the home of her godchild and caregiver Leila Tee after suffering through a number of illnesses. She was 62.
She worked in a variety of parish and diocesan ministries. She was a Secular Franciscan. And several years ago, Bishop Silva put her on the Diocesan Pastoral Council, his mostly lay advisory panel.
On Oct. 9, 2001, she became a Consecrated Virgin Living in the World, a designation for independent, single women who dedicate their lives to prayer and service in their local diocese. It is an ancient and uncommon vocation, and a good fit for Linda who was a self-reliant and liberated spirit.
“Was our Linda a saint?” asked Cacpal’s fellow St. Elizabeth parishioner Wendy Ford in her eulogy. “Pretty close,” she said.
Anyone who knew Linda would agree.
For more than three decades she immersed herself in service, in study, in work and prayer, mostly at her beloved Aiea parish.
Her primary work at St. Elizabeth — she did a lot of things — was as the director of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults or RCIA, the program that prepares people for entrance into the Catholic faith. She held that position for 28 years, from 1982 to 2010.
Cacpal’s RCIA program consistently welcomed two and three times the number of converts every year than most other Hawaii’s parishes. When asked once why this might be, she shrugged it off and took no credit. Her parish is a friendly place, she said.
But if you start counting, which she wasn’t inclined to do, you discover that she helped bring hundreds of new Catholics into the faith.
A 2006 Hawaii Catholic Herald story examined the success of her program.
“God had a plan for me,” Cacpal told the newspaper. “I’ve always felt in my heart that this is what I was meant to do.”
Nevertheless, she credited her team of teachers and volunteers for the parish’s accomplishments.
“I could never do it all by myself. It takes a team of people to make something like this work,” she said.
“We are a very friendly and welcoming parish,” she said. “Maybe that’s why people enjoy coming here.”
A cathedral convert
Linda Dorothy Lei Cacpal was born on May 5, 1952, the only child of Cipriano Manzano and Malinda Cora Cacpal. She graduated from Radford High School in 1970 and earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Seattle University, a Jesuit institution.
She worked for 32 years as a supervisor for the Hawaii State Department of Taxation, retiring in 2007.
Linda’s baptism on Oct. 9, 1976, at Our Lady of Peace Cathedral, was the beginning of her passionate journey in the Catholic faith.
In a 2010 letter to Our Sunday Visitor, a national Catholic weekly newspaper, she hinted at what attracted her to the church: “I think the drama of the Mass, especially during Lent, was one of the factors that drew me to the church. Sunday after Sunday I would go to the cathedral, see what the priest was doing and be fascinated. I remember my first experiences of the Triduum while not yet a Catholic … especially walking into the absolutely dark church at the Vigil … Holy Mother Church is one unending drama.”
With the enthusiasm of a convert, a fervor that would not diminish, she volunteered for various ministries at the cathedral, before moving in 1982 to Aiea and her final parish, St. Elizabeth.
Somewhere along the line, she fell in love with Pope Benedict XVI. It was a gradual thing. In her more impetuous youth as a theology student in Seattle, Cacpal had dismissed the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as theologically rigid.
But the more she read about the later-Pope Benedict, the more enamored she became. It was much more than an appreciation of the pope’s towering intellect. She was attracted by the clarity of his writing, his refinement, his humility, and perhaps even their shared love of cats.
She was a pure fan, the kind who would travel all the way to New York to see the man, to be one in a crowd of tens of thousands, despite her frail health and need for dialysis three times a week.
That was in 2008, when Pope Benedict made a trip to the East Coast. Cacpal’s papal pilgrimage gained her a feature story in the Honolulu Advertiser.
Around that time she cyber-befriended Rocco Palmo, the Philadelphia-based writer of Whispers in the Loggia, one of the Catholic Church’s most informed blogs, who told the rest of the world about Linda’s intrepid trip. Cacpal would thereafter find herself mentioned in Palmo’s postings from time to time.
Medical crosses
The dialysis dependency that made her New York journey risky was only one of several medical crosses she bravely carried.
When an illness took her away from the parish for extended periods of time, she kept friends informed of her medical condition, mostly for their sake, not hers.
Her typical emails would open with a nod to God: “First of all, I give praise and thanks to God for his mercy and goodness. He has never left me to myself and has given me so many opportunities to be of service and for that I am very grateful.”
Then down to business: “For many of you this may be hard news to hear but I’m including you in this email because I consider you all my friends and part of my parish and spiritual family. Please do not worry, but I ask for your prayers on this new journey of life. This morning I met with a specialist who gave me news of a biopsy …”
She always ended on a gracious note. “God bless you for all that you have been, will continue to be, in my life through our Lord Jesus. … Love you all. … Peace and every good thing. … Keeping the sun to my face. … Linda.”
Late last year, it all became too much for Linda and on Dec. 26 she died.
On that day, her friend Palmo, in a final blog posting, wrote, “Darling Linda, this Christmas the Word Made Flesh came for you. May Marianne and Damien lead you in — pray for us!”
The Internet was the medium for other tributes as well.
“She was so instrumental in my faith formation,” wrote a friend on Facebook. “Everything she did was done with the intent of glorifying Jesus. Even in dying, she waited til after Christmas so that the celebration of the birth of Christ would be just that. Typical Linda. God bless you Linda. Thank you for all your wisdom shared in our conversations. Thank you also for all the guidance you gave when I needed it most. No more suffering, rest in peace and know that you are loved.”
Said another: “I am truly sorry to hear of the passing of this wonderful woman. She truly exemplified what being a Christian was all about. May perpetual light shine upon her.”
Other entries simply said, “Aloha” and “Amen.”
‘Here I am Lord’
Linda had planned her own funeral liturgy, opening it with the hymn, “Here I Am Lord.”
It continues with words that could have been written about her: “It is I Lord. / I have heard you calling in the night. / I will go, Lord, where you lead me. / I will hold your people in my heart.”
Her first reading was a passage from the intimate lovers’ dialogue in the Song of Solomon, with such lines as, “For I am faint with love. His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me.” Not your usual funeral meditation, but for Linda, it fit.
Wendy Ford’s eulogy paid homage to Linda’s gifts and contributions.
“Her legacy will forever be all the countless numbers of men and women who came seeking wholeness and found God,” she said.
“This one simple, yet complex woman, a Catholic convert no less, was so filled with love for God and the Catholic faith,” Ford said.
“Her theological knowledge knew no bounds. She was like a walking Catholic encyclopedia and catechism all stored in one female mainframe,” she said.
With no relatives in Hawaii, her family was literally a church one, Ford said, fellow parish ministers, council and committee members, liturgy coordinators, sacristans, choir members, religious education teachers, diocesan colleagues, converts and her brothers and sisters of the Secular Franciscans.
Capuchin Franciscan Father Michel Dalton’s funeral homily highlighted Linda’s impact a committed layperson.
“What a beautiful day!” her former pastor began. “She did it again. She got us all together.”
“She was a woman of God, not perfect, but always striving for perfection,” he said, “a woman of the church.”
“She loved the church, this parish community, the church universal,” Father Dalton said. “She taught us about joyfulness.”
Her life was one of “loving, forgiving and embracing community. She lived simply, simply, simply,” he said, following St. Augustine’s credo, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”
Linda Cacpal was buried at Valley of the Temples Memorial Park in Kaneohe.
