By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Bishop Larry Silva on Sept. 20 will bless and rename a former Episcopal church acquired three years ago by Holy Family Parish in Honolulu and now used by the Korean Catholic Community.
The former St. George Church will be called the St. Andrew Kim Taegon Oratory after the first Korean Catholic priest. Ordained in 1845, he was among the 103 Korean Martyrs killed during a persecution in 1839-66 and canonized in 1984. Sept. 20 is his feast day.
Bishop Silva made the announcement in a decree at the Honolulu chancery dated Sept. 10.
The Korean Catholic Community is a ministry of the Diocese of Honolulu for Korean-speaking Catholics overseen by a priest-chaplain appointed by and under the supervision of the Bishop of Honolulu.
The community’s chaplain is Father Young Kun Kim.
Because of a lack of space, the Korean community relocated on July 1 from its former base at St. Pius X Church in Manoa to property owned by Holy Family Parish at 511 Main Street in Honolulu’s airport district. The Korean Catholic Community had been at St. Pius X for 20 years.
511 Main Street is the location of the former St. George Episcopal Church. It sits a half mile from Holy Family Church, which bought it in 2016 for future development. The site, which also has a rectory and offices, is leased by Holy Family Parish to the Korean community.
The Korean Catholic Community was established in 1974 by Maryknoll Father Frank Bookmyer at Sacred Heart Parish, Punahou. With the exception of another Maryknoll priest, Father John F. Soltis, all the chaplains since have been primarily priests from Korea.
While not classified as an independent parish, the Korean Catholic Community has a regular schedule of weekday and weekend Masses, a Sunday school, an RCIA program and a Korean language school offered in both English and Korean.
According to Father Kim, 400-430 people attend Mass on weekends, and about 60-70 total during the week.
The community has a paid office manager, a director of religious education and an organist for the choir.
It also takes up its own collection from which it pays rent to Holy Family and an assessment to the Diocese of Honolulu and covers the wages and benefits of its pastor and staff.
An “oratory” is a place of worship used by a community that is not a full-fledged parish. Hawaii’s only other oratory is Mystical Rose on the Chaminade University and St. Louis School campus.
The Diocese of Honolulu has another ethnic Catholic community, the Vietnamese Holy Martyrs Catholic Community, which operates at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa in Kapalama under the administration of its own chaplain.
