The local Catholic’s entrance into the Paulist religious order included a move to the east coast, homesickness, catching COVID-19, a tiki bar boat rescue and making his first vows
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
When Chris Malano headed from Hawaii to Washington, D.C., in fall 2019 to begin his formation as a Paulist priest, he knew the path ahead was unclear.
And while he did expect to face challenging studies and some homesickness, he could not have predicted a global pandemic causing an outbreak in his seminary building or that he would catch COVID-19. Nor did Malano think he’d be closing out his novice year helping to rescue a distressed kayaker near the Paulist Fathers’ summer retreat.
“This novitiate year was a roller coaster ride,” Malano told the Hawaii Catholic Herald via email. “The pandemic forced us to reimagine what it means to be church when the community is not able to gather physically and provided an opportunity for me to think hard about how to evangelize like the Paulist founder, Father Isaac Hecker, did in his own time, by using tools of the modern age.”
Discernment
Malano, who was born and raised on Oahu, grew up going to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Ewa Beach and St. Joseph Church in Waipahu. He graduated from Waipahu High School. It was while Malano was earning a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of New Mexico that he began thinking about religious life.
After college, he served as a lay missionary for Pax Romana, an international Catholic student movement. He returned to Hawaii in 2012 to help care for his grandmother. He also earned a master’s in global development and social justice from St. John’s University.
Back in the islands, Malano made the Newman Center/Holy Spirit Parish at the University of Hawaii at Manoa his parish and later took a job as its parish administrator from 2015 to 2019. His work there led him to co-edit and contribute to “God’s Quad,” an anthology about Christian campus ministry small groups, which won a 2019 Catholic Press Association book award.
Working with the Newman community also reconnected Malano to a religious vocation. After discernment, he chose to apply to the Congregation of St. Paul (Paulists), whom he’d first encountered as a student leader years before. He’d also admired Busted Halo, a website aimed at young adult Catholics that the Paulists run.
“The Paulist charism of creating spaces and opportunities to cultivate ecumenical and interreligious dialogue piqued my interest,” Malano said. “I can see myself as a bridge-building agent for good.”
He received his acceptance in May 2019 and entered the Paulist novitiate in Washington, D.C., that August.
Like many a kamaaina away from home, Malano says that on the Mainland he misses “local kine grindz,” especially fresh fish, and going to the beach year-round. He also wishes he could cook more.
“At St. Joseph Seminary, the whole house of 30-plus people eats together, so we don’t have access to cook our own meals,” Malano said. “I used to cook and help cook a lot of meals at the Newman Center.”
Chris Malano, second from back on the left, poses with Paulist superior general Eric Andrews (in white) and other Paulist novices and seminarians making renewals of promise and first and final promises on Sept. 4 at the Paulist formation house in Washington D.C. (Photo courtesy Chris Malano)
COVID-19 strikes
Malano spent fall and part of winter 2019 in Washington and then Lent 2020 at the Paulist Center in Boston. But after returning to St. Joseph Seminary in Washington after Easter, Malano found himself in the middle of a COVID-19 outbreak at the seminary building.
He caught the coronavirus in mid-May and weathered it out in isolation in his dorm room. For Malano, the virus meant a loss of his sense of taste and smell, several days of high fever, severe fatigue, sore throat, painful coughing and other symptoms.
“Several priests died, including my novice director, Father Rich Colgan,” Malano said. “When we recovered, we moved to St. Mary’s of the Lake at Lake George, New York, to escape the virus. There we lived in our own little COVID-free bubble where we could roam freely around the campus.”
Another tragedy struck during the summer when a swimmer in his 20s drowned near the Paulists’ dock. Malano was with Paulist Father Frank Desiderio, the director of St. Mary’s of the Lake, when the young man’s body was recovered from the water.
“I assisted with the prayers for the dead before the authorities took him away,” Malano said.
But the summer also brought healing and small joys. There was horseback riding, kayaking, swimming, boating, hiking, croquet and cornhole. Friday movie nights with films projected on a bedsheet, stargazing and bonfires. Malano helped put on small parties for the Paulist group and tried to get his fellow brothers to love karaoke.
“They’ll come around someday and they’ll love it as much as I do, I just know it!” he said.
The tiki bar boat rescue
And then there was the tiki bar boat adventure.
On Aug. 11, on the invitation of Greg Barrett, who owns Tiki Tours and is the neighbor of a St. Mary’s employee, seven Paulists including Malano headed out on a free boat tour of the lake.
About three-fourths of the way through the cruise, the group spotted a paddle drifting on the water and then a man holding onto a capsized kayak. The man, Jimmy MacDonald, had a life preserver on but was barely floating, so the boat cruised over to see if he needed help.
Malano and some of the other Paulists helped pull MacDonald out of the water and salvaged his kayak.
After the group commented about the cross around MacDonald’s neck, he told them he’d been praying to God for help and that he was an evangelical Christian.
“He was thankful to have been rescued — he thought he was going to die that day,” Malano said. “He shared with us that he is an addictions counselor and after years of being sober he would have never thought that a bar is what would have saved him.”
“Some could say that we were at the right place at the right time. But, as a person of faith, I don’t think it was a coincidence — perhaps it was providential that we were there when Jimmy needed help.
“To close out the summer with rescuing Jimmy it was nice to have a story with a happy ending.”
First vows
Malano made his “first promise” as a Paulist on Sept. 4 at the Paulist House of Mission and Formation at St. Joseph’s Seminary.
In his homily, Paulist superior general Father Eric Andrews reviewed the impact of the group’s late and much-loved formation director Father Rich Colgan and the tiki bar rescue of an evangelical recovering addict by Catholics.
“In a very literal way you were fishers of men that day,” said Father Andrews. “Only through the spirit of God through Rich Colgan could this be brought to conclusion. A sign that as you abide and as we trust and as we are on the boat with our Lord in difficult seas, salvation comes, things come to completion. And so we give thanks.”
Now that he’s completed his novice year, Malano is in his first seminarian year of theological studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is assigned to pastoral ministry at the Church of the Resurrection in Burtonsville, Maryland, where he will teach religious education. Malano will also serve on the board of the Paulist Reconciliation Ministries, which includes an outreach program to inactive Catholics called Landings International.
Malano says he may struggle with some of his coursework — philosophy in particular — but if he can get through 2020, he can get through that.
“As chaotic as it has been, the calling of the Holy Spirit couldn’t have been stronger and clearer,” Malano said. “Sure it isn’t always easy at times, but I have my brother Paulists to lean on for support and I’m thankful to have supportive friends in Hawaii and around the world and a loving family to sustain me in prayer.
