Diocese’s retired priests are a diverse group

But all gave their final years of active ministry as priests of the Diocese of Honolulu

By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Hawaii’s retired diocesan priests are a very diverse group. Only a handful have island roots. Most have backgrounds elsewhere — with religious orders, the military or other dioceses. Some haven’t been to Hawaii in years, having served and settled somewhere else. Nearly a third live on the Mainland.

But they all have one thing in common: they gave their final active years of ministry as priests of the Diocese of Honolulu. And the diocese honors that commitment by supporting these men in retirement. That support is getting more and more expensive as these priests age and their numbers grow. It’s the reason for the new second parish collection for retired priests, Nov. 7 and 8.

As varied as their backgrounds are the lives of these priests today. Some remain active, some are constrained by ill health, some are social, some are solitary.

Here are a few of their stories.

I miss the people

“Retired? I’m not retired,” joked Father Joseph Grimaldi, former vicar general of the Diocese of Honolulu.

Actually, he did retire from active duty with the Honolulu diocese when he turned 71. But now, at age 80, he is ministering “almost full time” at St. Hugo of the Hills, a big parish just north of Detroit in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

There he is listed on the parish website as a “senior priest.”

Father Grimaldi, who is an open-heart surgery and cancer survivor, also “helps out in other places” and “does funerals, weddings and baptisms.”

One of his more unusual post-retirement pursuits, begun a few years back, is “The Father Joe Podcast” (thefatherjoepodcast.com). (A podcast is a series of spoken word digital audio files that can be downloaded for listening at one’s convenience.)

Father Grimaldi records an 18-minute podcast twice a week with radio personality Ken Calbert on “timely topics related to the church,” he said. “Anything really. Nothing deeply theological.”

The project has taken off, and he now has 250 sessions recorded and about 55,000 listeners.

Where he now lives, his ex-stomping grounds as a former Christian Brother educator, is “beautiful,” he said, describing over the phone a “perfect” warm autumn day with all the trees changing color.

“I don’t miss Hawaii. I miss the people. I miss the people,” he said, repeating himself for emphasis.

“I keep in touch with lay folks,” he said. “The bishop sends Christmas and birthday cards.”

“Every so often I wish I didn’t have to make my bed,” he said, contemplating life in an assisted retirement community. “Sometimes I think about it.”

Taking care of others

Father Victor Lanuevo has only been retired for two years, but he is in high demand as a helping hand. He provides priestly services where and when he can.

“It is hard to refuse,” he said.

He’s booked for Saturday Masses for the Carmelite Sisters at St. Stephen Diocesan Center, Friday Masses for the Daughters of St. Paul on Bishop Street, and weekday Masses at Tripler Hospital.

The Carmelites return the favor by gathering for him cut flowers from their extensive garden to bring weekly to his parents’ graves at the Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery in Kaneohe. It is a gesture for which he is very grateful.

At 71, as one of the younger priests living at One Archer Lane, a high-rise on King Street in Honolulu where the diocese owns apartments for retired priests, and where Father Lanuevo retired in 2018, he drives some of the resident priests to doctors’ appointment and grocery shopping.

“Retirement is a chance to take care of oneself by taking care of others,” he wrote in an email.

Ordained in 1975, he has logged many years of priestly ministry. He stays in touch with past parishioners, although these days it’s more likely for funeral services.

“I bury some of them,” he said. “And I do the funerals of their friends and family members.”

To stay in shape, Father Lanuevo jogs around the Neal S. Blaisdell Center.

To keep busy, he is a serious cook, presently enrolled online in the Escoffier School of Culinary Arts.

“I do some baking for the Carmelite Sisters and for the Daughters of Saint Paul,” he said. He also prepares meals for the retired priests at One Archer Lane.

“I do it for free,” he said. He even pays for the ingredients.

“I consider it tithing,” he said, giving something back to those who have been so generous with their lives.

“When I finish my culinary courses next year in February, I can devote more time cooking for the priests and nuns,” he said.

Father Lanuevo enjoys bringing nourishment weekly to another grateful “flock.” During his parental cemetery visits, he feeds birds who have come to expect his treats. They know his schedule. They wait for him, he said.

As you grow older, you develop an “affinity to animals,” he said. Which is one reason, he said, “Someday I hope to visit a safari in Africa.”

Somewhat contemplative life

Ordained in 1984, Father Michael Owens retired early, in 2003, “for medical reasons.”

Now, at age 62, in keeping with his somewhat contemplative life at St. Stephen Diocesan Center, where he was “assigned,” he does ministerial work for the Carmelite Monastery and the Benedictine Monastery. He also provides spiritual direction.

He has known his Carmelite “neighbors” since he entered St. Stephen Seminary there in 1975.

He wrote affectionately of them in the Hawaii Catholic Herald two years ago.

“I celebrated my first Mass with them the day after I was ordained. We’ve become so close that I think of them as family. They are my big sisters and I am their little brother,” he said.

Father Owens stays in touch with “some” of his former parishioners but does “very little” socializing with other priests, retired or active.

He keeps busy reading, following Facebook, baking and watching “Asian TV.”

Life to the full

In a video produced by the diocese to promote the second collection, several retired priests reflected on their present lives.

One of them is Father Gary Colton.

“You know, Jesus said, ‘I come that you might have life and have it to the full,’” said Father Colton, 78. “My ministry has been to give these people, these parishes, a full life.”

“As a result of doing that, I felt that I have had a full life as a parish priest in the Diocese of Honolulu,” he said.

“My 52 years as a priest have been full,” said Father Colton, who was ordained on June 1, 1968. “They have been a confirmation of what I wanted to do for others.”

The former pastor, who retired in 2012, calls himself both a “parishioner” and assisting priest at St. Theresa Church in Kihei, Maui, where he lives. “I help out on weekends as one of the priests there,” he said.

Father Colton served his entire priesthood in numerous parishes on Oahu and Maui, some places more than once.

He was also a police chaplain, a member of the advisory board for Catholic Charities Hawaii, Maui, and one of the founding members of the board of directors for Ka Hale A Ke Ola Homeless Resources Centers.

He has run six marathons.

Also featured on the video is Father Louis Harry Yim.

“I certainly look back on all these years with great joy,” said the native Hawaiian priest.

“I am grateful to our Lord for the many blessings he has bestowed upon me throughout the years of my priesthood,” he said.

A simpler, quieter life

Father John Berger, former rector of the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, retired from active ministry in 2015, a couple of years after suffering a “damaging heart attack.” He moved to Minnesota a year later to be nearer to his siblings.

Father Berger first came to Hawaii in 1989 as a Conventual Franciscan to complete a year’s internship in clinical pastoral education at The Queen’s Medical Center. He then entered the seminary for another religious order, switching later to the Diocese of Honolulu.

He served as a parish priest in Hilo and at the cathedral before the heart attack sidelined him.

“Although my health and breathing are still somewhat poor and tenuous, I remain connected to the liturgy and occasionally even offer some very limited help with certain parish and institutional Masses,” he said in an email.

He had begun to celebrate Mass at a nursing home, when COVID struck particularly hard, killing around 100 residents and infecting 100 staff.

“For seven months I did not do a single public Mass,” he said.

“I have embraced a much simpler, quieter life now,” he said, totally relying upon the diocese’s ongoing support.

He keeps in touch with friends in Honolulu and Hilo, and has made a few in Minnesota.

He said the high points of his week is “saying an occasional Mass” and taking his dog Zippy (adopted from the Honolulu Humane Society) to the park across the street.

“Every now and then, someone will send me a picture of the renovation work inside the cathedral and my mind instantly goes back to the 15 happy years I spent there,” he said.

“Although I am physically thousands of miles away, my heart is still at Our Lady of Peace,” he said. “I remain most grateful for the people there whose kindness and generous support are so vitally important to me.”

Twice retired

When Father William (Bill) Shannon first came to Hawaii in 1996 he had already been a priest for 25 years.

Ordained a Capuchin Franciscan priest on Sept. 11, 1971, in Yonkers, New York, he was first assigned to “internal ministry,” teaching in seminaries, serving as novice master, and doing administrative work at his congregational headquarters, while doing parish work on weekends.

“During those years, a great joy of my priesthood was being a chaplain on Cursillo retreat weekends and youth ministry weekends, as well as being a chaplain for Engaged Encounter,” he said.

In 1996, on the occasion of his 25th anniversary of priesthood, he moved to Hawaii. He asked his superiors if he could stay in the islands and join the diocese. Permission granted, he became a diocesan priest and received a string of parish assignments, his last as pastor of Immaculate Conception in Lihue for 11 years.

Then Father Shannon retired. Twice. Once officially and then actually.

He left his parish on June 30, 2014, at age 70, and emerged from “retirement” the next day, July 1, to accept the temporary chancery position of director of seminarians.

Exactly two years later, he really retired.

“A retired priest once told me that there are two stages of retirement, active and more quiet and limited,” Father Shannon said.

He left behind his “younger man” pastimes of travel, photography, underwater photography and mountain biking for “lap swimming a couple days a week and a 20-minute walk every evening.”

He loves to cook and to stay in touch with his family on the Mainland and his friends around the world. He also continues to serve on several diocesan committees.

Father Shannon lives at One Archer Lane with five other priests, each in his own apartment.

“Some of us gather for a Saturday vigil Mass,” he said.

“Living here has been a perfect choice for me since we are only a mile away from the cathedral, all the main hospitals are right nearby and it’s only a 20-minute ride to the airport,” he said.

The welcoming

Parkinson’s disease has turned Father Patrick Freitas’ retirement from an active island-hopping ministry to a daily solitary “prayer of welcoming” — welcoming this “season of repair and final spiritual transformation.”

“The first seven years were fun,” he said by phone in a voice slowed and stripped of expression by the illness.

“I was able to be very active” covering for priests on weekends, he said. His memory, still sharp, clicked through a list of past assignments on the Big Island and Oahu.

“I was able to do pastoral work without the responsibilities of pastoring in a material way. I enjoyed that a lot,” he said.

Then, what doctors thought was a stroke five years ago turned into a Parkinson’s diagnosis. It turned his life upside down.

On March 1 of this year, he moved from his apartment at One Archer Lane, where he had retired in 2012, to an assisted living residential home in Waipahu.

Father Freitas used to “gather the guys” who lived at One Archer Lane for Saturday evening Mass. Now he walks with a walker, watches Mass on television and waits for a priest from St. Joseph Parish in Waipahu to bring him Holy Communion. He gave his chalice to St. John Vianney Parish, his first priestly assignment.

The coronavirus has closed the house to visitors. He keeps in contact with family and friends by phone.

“My social life is with doctors,” he said.

The Maui-born priest, who turns 82 in December, is still “reading and keeping up on stuff” even as it has become “harder and harder to concentrate.”

“I loved to write, to sermonize,” he said. “That’s not possible now.”

He said the illness has reduced his life to “just one note, one rhythm, one intensity. It’s a whole different world. You do the best you can do.”

Father Freitas finds daily solace in “The Welcoming Prayer,” which he found in a book by the Franciscan spiritual writer Richard Rohr, attributed to Mary Mrozowski and Father Thomas Keating:

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within. Amen.