The furor over the decision to move sisters from their Manoa convent to a senior care center leads to its reversal
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
The Hawaii public learned something about Catholic religious life in the furor over the decision to move 24 Sisters of St. Francis from their convent in Manoa to a private, secular assisted living facility — that the sisters answer to a higher authority beyond Hawaii (besides God).
And that higher authority probably learned something too — Hawaii is different.
The higher authority is the six-sister Leadership Team of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, to which the Hawaii sisters belong. They flew to Hawaii last month to tell the sisters in a face-to-face meeting Dec. 2 that they would be vacating their 50-year-old four-story convent in March to move to the Plaza, a senior center in Pearl City, where a floor was being renovated to accommodate them.
The Leadership Team announced the news to general public though their lay communications director and spokeswoman, who also came to Hawaii to distribute a news release and coordinate a news conference at a Honolulu hotel.
When the news media sought out the Hawaii sisters for reaction, they got it, big time.
The Hawaii sisters were perplexed and angry. “In shock” was the phrase some used. Many had lived together for decades at the Manoa convent which is on the 11-acre Saint Francis School campus.
The Leadership Team said the move was necessary because the Manoa convent needed “extensive and costly repairs.” The Plaza, it said, was fixing up the fourth floor, where the sisters would live, with a community room, a kitchen area and a chapel.
But the Hawaii sisters, who are in their 70s, 80s and 90s, said the Plaza move would be too much of a disruption of the community life to which they are accustomed. They cited its impractical location, its lack of accommodations for half a dozen sisters needing more medical attention, the sharing of activity and dining space with other residents, the $4,500-a-month cost per room including the chapel and other renovated areas, the extra cost for nursing assistance, and the fact that some of the sisters have full-time jobs at Saint Francis School and elsewhere.
The sisters said the move would also deprive them of contact with the school where many enjoyed close and active ties.
SPEAKING THEIR MINDS
Normally, internal congregational disagreements, as intense as they may be, remain internal. That wasn’t the case here. The news was such a surprise to the sisters that their reflexive gasp could hardly be contained. And the media already reporting the story provided an immediate outlet for their feelings.
The Hawaii sisters, like the head of Saint Francis School Sister Joan of Arc Souza, are quite comfortable speaking their minds in a familiar local media landscape, with their school and health care system frequently in the news, not to mention the international spotlight created by the canonization of their Hawaii founder, St. Marianne Cope.
These sisters are, in fact, the religious daughters of the independent-minded St. Marianne, who was always ready to stand in defense of her sisters.
The Leadership Team may not have expected such a vocal and public backlash, but it didn’t surprise those who know the Hawaii sisters. And as Sister Joan of Arc quipped in one media story, “Most of us know half the people on the island and we are related to the other half.”
The dispute quickly and naturally turned into a Mainland vs. Hawaii clash, which has the potential to conjure up all kinds of negative feelings. And the media using words like “eviction” and “forced relocation” surely helped get the blood boiling.
The Leadership Team probably didn’t help matters by remaining anonymous. As such, it was interesting to see how the local media characterized them: “the New York-based operators of the convent,” “the parent organization,” “the officials.”
In fact, the team was in Hawaii the whole time of the announcement.
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Heading the leadership under the title of “general minister” is Sister Roberta Smith, who visits Hawaii often for important congregational events. The other members are Hawaii Sister Geraldine Ching, assistant general minister; and Sister Mary Jo Mattes, Sister Helen Hofmann, Sister Louise Alff and Sister Jeanne Weisbeck, who represent the congregation’s different regions.
Team members are elected to four-year terms. The present team’s term ends in July.
The sisters also have a lay general business manager who has a hand in financial decisions.
The outspokenness of the Hawaii sisters was an invitation for school alumni, friends and benefactors, and also perfect strangers, to join in on their behalf. They reacted in predictable ways with demonstrations, letters to the editor, petitions and phone calls — all courses of action that usually have little success when used against authority in the Catholic Church.
The Hawaii sisters were also ready to appeal to the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which oversees religious congregations, claiming, among other things, that a move to the Plaza would deny the sisters their right to an authentic community life.
In the end, however, the religious vow of obedience would have to prevail.
But obedience is not blind. Community decisions, including where sisters are to reside, are supposed to be made through dialogue and consultation. Decision-making is a shared process. Coercion is not a part of it.
The sisters’ leadership maintained that dialogue and consultation had already taken place. But the Hawaii sisters were expecting further discussion. Instead they received a final verdict.
DECISION IS REVERSED
Meanwhile, behind all the drama lay a potential compromise. The congregation-sponsored St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii has been preparing for the retired sisters a section of Kupuna Village, a multi-functional residential and care facility for the elderly, on the campus of the former St. Francis Medical Center in Liliha.
The Leadership Team told the elderly sisters they could move to the Kupuna Village when it was finished 18-24 months from now, but they would still have to go to the Plaza first. This option, a significant one, was not mentioned in the leadership’s original news release.
But the idea of having to move twice in two years made no sense to the Manoa sisters, considering they did not agree with their leadership’s assessment that their convent was a safety hazard needing $2.5 million in repairs.
Sister Joan of Arc, who lives there, and Sister Alicia Damien Lau, who has overseen previous renovations, said the building is in good shape and well used, and that any necessary repairs would cost only a small fraction of that amount.
Two weeks after announcing the move, Sister Roberta and the five congregational leaders reversed their decision.
The change in position was communicated to the entire community in a brief letter dated Dec. 15 and signed by all six members of the Leadership Team. The memo gave little indication of the uproar the original decision created.
“After listening to the sisters and in a spirit of prayer, Leadership has reconsidered our original decision,” the letter said.
The sisters will not have to go to the Plaza in March, but will be able to stay in Manoa until they move instead to the Franciscans’ own Kupuna Village in Liliha.
The leadership said their reason for the change of heart was the Manoa sisters’ “primary concern” of having to “move twice within just a few years’ time.”
“Our original proposal to move the sisters to the Plaza was made with love, concern and the best interest of our Hawaii sisters,” leadership wrote. They added that they still have reservations about the convent as an “interim residence.”
NEUMANN COMMUNITIES
The Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, with more than 460 members, is one of the largest congregations of Franciscans in the U.S. It was created in 2004 with the joining of three American Franciscan congregations, and later a fourth, all of whom trace their origins to a single community in Philadelphia. That first group, founded by three women in 1855 under the tutelage of St. John Neumann, then Bishop of Philadelphia, had expanded over the years into a number of independent Franciscan communities in New York State and Pennsylvania.
One of those communities was the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, N.Y., of which Mother Marianne Cope was the superior in 1883 when she led a missionary group of six sisters to Hawaii to care for the kingdom’s Hansen’s disease patients. She served in Hawaii 35 years, never returning to Syracuse. Her legacy was a vibrant, progressive and prolific community of religious women who emerged as leaders in health care and education in the islands.
Though separated by 5,000 miles and its local priorities, the Hawaii community has remained a part of the Syracuse community and its absorption into the Neumann communities.
The Neumann communities came together for the strength and security of larger numbers at a time of dwindling vocations. But the merger of groups with independent histories, traditions and loyalties and geographies can create difficulties. The congregation developed a “strategic sustainability plan” to insure a healthy future. The vacating of old convents and the outsourced care of aging sisters are part of the plan. Situations similar to Hawaii have already taken place at two locations in New York.
Reports about the earlier convent closures indicate that they were as distressing to their residents as the proposed plans for the Manoa sisters.
In a 2012 New York Times story about a similar move for the Sisters of St. Francis in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., a member of the Leadership Team was quoted as saying, “This is the most painful, emotional thing our sisters have ever been through.”
Similar moves are being considered at two other locations.
