St. Joseph Parish, Waipahu
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
During this “Year of St. Joseph,” why not visit one of the St. Joseph churches in Hawaii. In this issue, we head to our last St. Joseph Church, this time in Waipahu on Oahu. Read the rest of the St. Joseph Church stories here.
Like St. Joseph, Makawao, St. Joseph Parish in Waipahu’s congregation grew along with the numbers of sugar cane workers settling in the area.
The first Catholic church in the Waikele-Waipahu area was a small adobe chapel built on land given or bought from a Hawaiian chief in 1860. Sacred Hearts Father Raymond Delalande built both the church and a one-room school.
After clearing, tilling, plowing and irrigating the parched land in Waipahu, the Oahu Sugar Company mill opened in 1899 and the first sugar crop was harvested. More and more Catholic Filipino and Portuguese workers moved to the area to work the cane fields. Fellow Catholic Spanish and Puerto Rican workers followed.
A bigger, permanent St. Joseph church opened in 1902 with the design and construction help of Oahu Railway Company’s H. Hughes and Oahu Sugar Co.’s manager, August Ahrens.
Google Street View of the remains of St. Joseph cemetery next to Waipahu Elementary School
The old and rundown St. Joseph parish cemetery still sits on Waikele Road and Waipahu Street, next to Waipahu Elementary School, where the original St. Joseph Church was located until it moved to its current location on Farrington Highway. Some remains were relocated to Mililani Memorial Park when apartment buildings went up on part of the old cemetery grounds.
After the 1902 church became termite-rotten and too small for its congregation, its pastor, Sacred Hearts Father Leo Taeyaerts, traded agriculture land owned by the then-Catholic mission and future Diocese of Honolulu for acreage near the Waipahu Depot Road. He was assisted by Hans L’Orange of the Oahu Sugar Co. who was well-known for his community involvement and civic nature.
The original St. Joseph Church cemetery ruins sit next to Waipahu Elementary School. This is where the first St. Joseph Church in Waipahu was built before being moved to its present spot.
In 1941, a new, concrete and hollow tile church with a tower and a rectory were dedicated.
“Church and rectory are excellent buildings,” wrote Sacred Hearts Father Robert Schoofs in the book “Pioneers of the Faith.” “There is style, simplicity, and solidity in both edifices. Viewed from the highway the church is a most pleasing and impressive building; the cathedral-like main entrance, topped by a stained glass rosace, and the square tower to the left of the church are entirely in harmony with the vigorous style of the body of the church.”
Today, St. Joseph Parish in Waipahu has the largest congregation in the Diocese of Honolulu. The diocese’s 2019 “October count” recorded an average of 3,252 people attending Mass at St. Joseph in a single weekend
It’s currently served by three Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette priests but was staffed by Sacred Hearts priests for many years. The majority of parishioners today are of Filipino descendant.
St. Joseph School
The parish school started up in a defunct Japanese language school building in 1946 with 128 students in kindergarten through first grade and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet on staff. It grew from there, with a permanent school finished in 1949 and classes eventually reaching through eighth grade.
The Sacred Hearts Fathers turned over the administration of the school after 40 years. La Salette priests have been in charge since 1986 and the school was once staffed with members of the Congregation of Benedictine Sisters of the Eucharistic King. A mostly lay faculty and staff run it today.
St. Joseph High School’s Class of 2018 (Courtesy photo)
St. Joseph churches of the islands’ past
In addition to the five St. Joseph churches you can visit today, there were many St. Joseph churches in the islands that no longer exist.
Makaweli, Kauai
Now known as Kaumakani, the community of Makaweli on the southern shore of Kauai was part of the 1880s sugar plantation boom in Hawaii. Many Catholic immigrants came to live and work in the island fields.
In 1911, Sacred Hearts Father Herman Schrad ended up in the Waimea area of Kauai and saw the need for a church east of the Waimea River to serve workers from the Makaweli Plantation (later called the Olokele Plantation). Father Schrad asked the plantation manager for a plot of land to build a Catholic Church in Makaweli.
“The manager did better; he had his skilled workers erect the two buildings with but one request — that if at all possible, the priest should live in Makaweli,” according to “Pioneers of the Faith.
The resulting church was named after St. Joseph Church and blessed in 1913. Eventually, as sugar cane production wound down, St. Joseph became a mission of St. Theresa Parish in Kekaha to the east.
Unfortunately, the little original St. Joseph burned down and the new sugar company owners wouldn’t allow a new church to be built on the same spot. Instead, parishioners made do with converting a former pool hall next to the Kaumakani post office into their new worship space.
St. Joseph Mission closed in October 2009 after a 96-year history, shuttering its doors at the same time as the Gay & Robinson Sugar Plantation, which owned the building and land, ended its sugar operation.
Kaumakani on Kauai
Moanalua, Oahu
A St. Joseph’s Chapel is mentioned a few times in “Pioneers of the Faith” as being under the care of Sacred Hearts Fathers Clement Evrard and Ulrich Taube along with St. John the Baptist in Kalihi but no other details are offered.
The 1927 book “History of the Catholic mission in the Hawaiian Islands,” by Sacred Hearts Father Reginald Yzendoorn, then the Chancellor-Secretary of the vicariate, mentions several churches where “Divine Services” were held. Among them were: “St. John the Baptist at Kalihi-waena, also very neat, but not large enough for the growing population; Our Lady of the Mount at Kaiulani Tract, having an almost exclusively Portuguese congregation; St. Anthony’s, on Puuhale Road, built in 1916, to which belongs the little mission chapel of St. Joseph at Moanalua, in the beautiful park of Mr. S. Damon.”
That park belonged to Samuel Damon, the owner of a large area of land in Moanalua. The original gardens were on the oceanside of today’s Moanalua Freeway and were later relocated to their present spot after the Damon Estate sold off land and redeveloped other parts into the Mapunapuna industrial park.
This Honolulu Star-Bulletin clipping from 1948 talks about the chapel being rebuilt for the fourth time.
Olowalu, Maui
The first permanent priests assigned to Maui arrived in 1846. One of them, Sacred Hearts Father Modest Favens, is credited with gaining a strong foothold for Catholicism in the larger Lahaina area. Many were baptized and received into the Catholic Church.
In 1913, a “young and zealous” Sacred Hearts priest, Father Bruno Bens, arrived in Lahaina, according to “Pioneers of the Faith.” Always busy and resourceful, Father Bens repaired the wooden walls of Maria Lanakila Church in Lahaina and built a “handsome little building” in Olowalu “for the convenience of the Hawaiians living in that area.” The small church was dedicated to St. Joseph in 1916.
Olowalu Sugar Mill photo, dated 1870-1890 (Public Domain)
Puukohola, Heiau-Kohala, Hawaii island
During his time in the Kohala area of Hawaii island, Sacred Hearts Father Oliver R. Bogaert looked after six mission chapels, two of which he built: St. Ann at Mahukona and St. Joseph in Puukohola. He also rebuilt St. John the Evangelist chapel in Waimea, originally constructed by Father Damien de Veuster, after it was destroyed by a fire in 1900.
St. Joseph was “built on top of the famous heiau of Puukohola, constructed by Kamehameha the Great, and on the very spot where once stood the palace of this great king.”
Waikapu, Maui
The small St. Joseph Church in Waikapu was built along Honoapiilani Highway in 1900 to serve Catholic plantation workers in two neighboring camps and a handful of residents in Maalaea, a small harbor south of the church.
St. Joseph was originally a mission of St. Anthony Parish in Wailuku and then a mission of St. Ann Parish in Waihee after the latter’s creation. St. Joseph mission church burned down in 1997, but there is still a shrine and plaque marking where it once stood.
Google Streetview image of St. Joseph Shrine
Sourcing for this story came in part from “Pioneers of the Faith” by Sacred Hearts Father Robert Schoofs, the Hawaii Catholic Herald’s editor from 1936-1943, and “A Pilgrimage Through Time” edited by Dominican Sister Malia Dominica Wong.
