Future of UH-Manoa Newman Center uncertain

The campus ministry parish is on the Sisters of St. Francis’ property that is for sale

By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Sitting at the edge of the former Saint Francis School campus in Manoa is a small residence and church that make up the Newman Center/Holy Spirit Parish at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. With its focus on campus ministry, the Newman Center is perfectly placed next to the sprawling flagship campus of the University of Hawaii system.

After Saint Francis School closed in 2019, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities put the 11.12-acre campus up for sale. The property includes the land under the Newman Center and neighboring Dever House residence, which means the parish is now faced with some tough decisions about its future.

A quick history

UH Catholic campus ministry formally dates back to the 1950s. Its first chaplains were Father John McDonald followed by the late Msgr. Daniel Dever, long before there was the present-day Newman Center building. From the 1980s to the early 2010s, priests from the Society of Jesus oversaw the parish until the religious order left the islands.

In 2011, Diocese of Honolulu priests took over, first with now-retired Father Jack Ryan as pastor, and now with Father Alfred Guerrero at the helm.

In Feb. 2019, a month after Father Guerrero became pastor, Saint Francis School announced its closure. Along with that came the probable future sale of the campus, and the Newman Center facing a potential rent hike or parish relocation in the future. It’s weighed heavily on him.

“It’s hard for me to be pastor to my students when I’m worrying about the future of the property,” said Father Guerrero, who celebrated his third ordination anniversary in May.

Before the pandemic, Newman Center/Holy Spirit Parish celebrated a daily Mass and four weekend Masses, attended by a mix of UH faculty, staff and students plus local Catholics with no university affiliation. In fact, many of the parish’s 310 registered households are not connected to UH, according to Father Guerrero.

“But I think generally the parishioners here understand their mission,” he said. “The parish community exists to support the mission to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the faculty, staff and students of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.”

There are about 300 students on the campus ministry email list and a core group of 30 or so students who came regularly to events like Sunday night dinners this academic year.

Since the coronavirus temporarily stopped in-person Masses and gatherings, Father Guerrero and his small staff have worked to find new ways to minister to both his non-student and young adult parishioners. Sunday Mass is now online, and he and his campus minister have moved other outreach efforts to the web. For instance, a virtual blessing for this year’s graduates took place during Mass on May 17.

Final exam time at UH is one of the Newman Center’s most active periods, Father Guerrero said, but with sheltering-in-place and social distancing orders, students weren’t able to come to the center for moral support, food or a quiet place to study. He worried about them and if they were eating well or stressing out.

Interior of the Newman Center during the 2019 Taize Prayer for Christianity Unity

What will come next?

Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has added a new and unexpected element to the sale of the Saint Francis campus and what the Newman Center will do once the land under its property has new owners.

A May 1981 agreement between the Third Franciscan Order Hawaii region and the Jesuit priests, who then ran the Newman Center, was for a $1,000 a year rent for two portions of the land. It was on these portions of the land that the Newman Center church and facilities and the neighboring Jesuit House — now referred to as the Dever House — were built by the Jesuits. These portions of land are a part of the Saint Francis campus.

After the Jesuits left Hawaii in 2011, the Diocese of Honolulu assumed the lease from the Jesuits and purchased the Jesuit House from the departing order.

The agreement made in 1981 is set to expire in April 2036 but it also says that by May 2021, the terms of rent are to be renegotiated.

Diocesan real estate director Marlene DeCosta said she has communicated with the Franciscan Sisters since 2014 in anticipation of the 2021 agreement renegotiation.

Under DeCosta’s guidance, the diocese submitted a proposal to the Franciscan Sisters for the order to buy the Newman Center/Dever House buildings that sit on the order-owned property, but that has yet to be accepted.

According to DeCosta, the Franciscan Sisters have said that the original agreement requires that the Newman Center’s rent go up as of May 1, 2021. She said their current offer is $175,000 a year in rent — what the order says is the market value for renting the two portions of land.

DeCosta said that Father Guerrero has worked diligently with a parish advisory committee for many months to determine the next steps for the center and what the mission of the Newman Center is.

That parish advisory committee agreed that they can’t afford the sisters’ proposed annual rent, which is close to half the parish’s operating budget. The Newman Center is already running at a deficit, Father Guerrero said, and hasn’t been subsidized by the diocese since the departure of the Jesuits.

If the Franciscan Sisters sold to the parish the portions of land on which the Newman Center and Dever House sit, it would also be landlocked between UH and the to-be-sold campus.

So Father Guerrero and his parishioner-led committee are exploring places around Manoa as an option to buy and move the parish to, but they haven’t yet found the right fit.

Father Guerrero isn’t sure that university students, most of whom don’t have cars, will venture far from campus for Mass or other activities if the Newman Center moved further afield or if their nearest Mass choice was at the neighboring parishes of St. Pius X, Sacred Heart or Sts. Peter and Paul, all of which are beyond an easy walking distance from UH.

Another option for the Newman Center is to have no permanent facility and offer campus ministry and Masses in rotating locations on the UH-Manoa campus.

Father Guerrero and his committee have also tried to look for Catholic-friendly investors that might buy the Saint Francis property and work with the Newman Center on a more affordable arrangement.

“In my heart, I’m trying to see — if we cannot find a space — do we move from a parish model to just campus ministry?” he said. “We want to make sure the student community has a place to gather, to worship, to come together in fellowship.”

Map of UH-Manoa campus with former St. Francis School campus to its northwest.

Tied to campus sale

City and County of Honolulu records show the 11.12-acre Saint Francis campus at 2707 and 2715 Pamoa Road is valued at $32.9 million, with the land making up $27.5 million of that.

The deadline for bids for the campus was originally set for mid-March, according to a previous note on the website of CBRE, the real estate company handling the sale for the Franciscan Sisters. But COVID-19 has changed things.

“As you might imagine, sales of property such as this are complex, and we are continuing to study alternatives,” said Gael Sopchak, the general manager for the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, about the status of bids for the property, in a May 8 email to the Hawaii Catholic Herald.

Rochelle Cassella, the congregational director of communications, said that because COVID-19 has delayed the sale process, the order doesn’t wish to speak further at this time on the topic.

Bishop Larry Silva succinctly summed up the challenging situation the Newman Center and the diocese is in, in a May 6 email to the Herald.

“This is a difficult issue, since there are so many unanswered questions: Will the new buyers allow the Newman Center to stay at its current location? Will the Newman Center have to relocate? If so, what is available in the area? Or will they have to look at another model in which ministry to students is conducted on campus facilities or at other venues, while Mass is celebrated on rented University property?” he said.

“I see the Newman Center ministry as being very important in the context of young adult ministry in general,” he added. “But at this point, with so many unanswered questions, it is hard to say what the future will look like. And with the challenges of the pandemic, the issue may become even more complicated.”

Father Guerrero wants to collaborate as much as possible with the diocese because he thinks young adult ministry is essential to the church. He pointed out that the Newman Center serves as a campus ministry resource not only to Oahu Catholics but also neighbor island Catholics attending UH Manoa. The campus has around 17,500 undergraduate and graduate students, and, according to the Newman Connection, an estimated 3,000 of them are Catholic.

“The Newman Center is important in the life of the church in the Diocese of Honolulu, the bigger church,” he said. “Because, in some sense, we do form leaders of the church that will go back to the diocese.”

“It would be sad if we ever lose this ministry,” he said.

Where have all the sisters gone?

With the closure of Saint Francis School and the pending sale of its campus, including the convent and chapel once used by the local Franciscan Sisters, the nuns, numbering about 25 and mostly retired, have moved out.

They are now in various locations, including other Franciscan convent properties on Oahu and a retirement community. A few sisters have moved back to the Franciscan headquarters in Syracuse, New York.

Franciscan Sisters Alicia Damien Lau and Barbara Jean Wajda are now living full-time in Kalaupapa, Molokai.

This article has been edited to include the name of the first UH Catholic campus ministry leader, Father John McDonald, who preceded Msgr. Daniel Dever in the role in the 1950s.