Punahou alum was a pastor, author
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Oratorian Father Halbert Francis Weidner, the Punahou School graduate who served in priestly ministry in Hawaii for more than 15 years, died Feb. 3 in a care home in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He was 71 and a priest for 41 years.
Bishop Larry Silva will celebrate a memorial Mass for Father Weidner at 5 p.m., March 21, at Holy Trinity Church in Kuliouou.
Father Weidner was born in Edina, Missouri on July 18, 1946. He grew up Baptist.
In a story published in 2000 in the Hawaii Catholic Herald, Father Weidner recalled his first awareness in the Catholic Church at age 7 when he was a patient at St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City. With a child’s curiosity, he observed the Sisters of St. Joseph who staffed the hospital.
Catholics he befriended in junior high school “added to my appreciation of the goodness of Catholics,” he said. He became a Catholic on Dec. 17, 1960, while at Punahou School, which he attended from 1959 to 1964.
“I remember the Maryknoll fathers, brothers and sisters at Sacred Heart, my parish,” he said. “I remember their encouragement of me even though I did not go to any youth ministry programs. I remember working in the parish library, the choir and acolytes.”
“I remember that the idea about a religious vocation would not go away,” he said.
Directly after graduating from Punahou in 1964, he went to the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in South Carolina. He formally joined the Oratory, a society of priests and brothers who live together under a Rule without taking religious vows, in 1966.
“I was attracted to community, daily meditation and the Eucharist,” Father Weidner recalled. “As a Baptist I had the Bible. As a Catholic I had the Bible and the Eucharist. In the Oratory we had a half hour a day to pray over the Bible and a half hour for the Eucharist. That was a perfect start. Our founder St. Philip loved the Bible and loved the Eucharist.”
After ordination, he served as director of religious education at the Oratory in Rock Hill, S.C., as a parish priest in South Carolina, as campus minister at Winthrop University, and as provost (major superior) at the oratory.
He earned a doctorate in theology at Oxford University in England in 1984.
Father Weidner is the author of several books including, “Island Affirmations,” “Grief, Loss, and Death: The Shadow Side of Ministry” with Andrew J. Weaver, and “Praying With John Cardinal Newman: Companions for the Journey.”
Father Weidner came to Hawaii in 1991, first serving as associate director of the Spiritual Life Center in Manoa. He was appointed associate pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in Kuliouou in 1994 and a year later pastor.
He also served as Vicar Forane for the East Honolulu vicariate and was a member of the Presbyteral Council, the diocesan College of Consultors, the diocesan Theological Commission and the Ecumenical Commission.
While a pastor, Father Weidner took on prison ministry at Halawa Correctional Facility, celebrating two Masses back-to-back on Sunday evening to accommodate the demand.
At Mass, inmates “offer their lives as worship with Christ,” he said. “I am doing this so they can participate in the Eucharist. That makes sense out of their lives.”
Father Weidner left Hawaii in 2007 to be pastor of St. Francis Parish in Middleton in the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, and a chaplain at Wesleyan University in Middletown.
