Collage of Catholic Charities Hawaii program images(Courtesy of Catholic Charities Hawaii)
“That is where Jesus is born,” Pope Francis said at Christmas, “close to the forgotten ones of the peripheries.”
That is where Catholic Charities Hawaii works — and has worked for 75 years — bringing dignity to the forgotten ones; “ennobling the excluded,” to borrow another phrase of the Holy Father.
Because each one is a child of God.
Catholic Charities’ provenance in Hawaii stretches back further than three-quarters of a century. For where there were Catholics, there was charity. No examples shine brighter than Hawaii’s own patrons of mercy and servants of the forgotten, St. Damien and St. Marianne.
As community efforts go, among Catholic Charities predecessors in Hawaii were the Catholic Women’s Aid Society and the men of the Columbus Welfare Association, both organized to meet the needs of their times — primarily those of immigrant plantation workers. And there were others.
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Honolulu was officially chartered on July 29, 1947, shortly after the end of World War II and the establishment of the diocese.
Since then, Catholic Charities has responded to the ever-shifting needs in the islands.
To reach out to families left in tatters by the war, Catholic Charities enlisted the Maryknoll Sisters of New York, all professional social workers. The sisters, witnessing the struggles of the plantation workers, also became strong advocates for immigrant laborers’ rights.
At its start, the name Catholic Charities covered all organized charitable work in the diocese, including St. Francis Hospital, St. Anthony Home on Oahu and Maui Children’s Home. Its social work division was called Catholic Social Services.
Post-war and into the 1960s, Catholic Social Services strengthened families through counseling, help for unwed parents, adoption services and programs for low-income residents of public housing.
In 1965, to accommodate the expanding need, Catholic Social Services opened a new headquarters on Vineyard Street in Honolulu.
Elderly, immigrants, refugees
The agency responded to the stresses of the 1970s and 1980s by providing help for the elderly, immigrants and refugees, women with unplanned pregnancies, troubled foster youth and children suffering abuse and neglect. Residential programs were offered to the elderly and persons in need of supportive living assistance.
Catholic Social Services returned to the name Catholic Charities in 1985.
After Hurricane Iniki slammed into Kauai in 1992, the agency opened an office there to respond to emergency needs.
In 1999, to counter the scarcity of affordable rental housing, Catholic Charities created the subsidiary Catholic Charities Housing Development Corporation.
As the 2000s launched, needs multiplied. Catholic Charities added specialized programs for medically complex babies, homeless families, victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, the prevention of child abuse and neglect, abstinence education, money management, and long-term care for disabled persons and the elderly.
Catholic Charities opened community-based operations on Hawaii Island, Kauai and Maui, and in 2001 added “Hawaii” to its name to more accurately represent the organization’s statewide presence.
On Oahu, Catholic Charities Hawaii acquired the former First Presbyterian Church in Makiki as a single permanent site, moving most of its programs and services to the location, now named the Catholic Charities Hawaii Clarence T.C. Ching Campus, in 2010.
An anonymous donor gave to the organization a 12-unit apartment building that now provides short-term housing and services to single mothers with young children.
With homelessness on the rise in urban Honolulu, Catholic Charities ran for the State of Hawaii a temporary safe haven in Kakaako for homeless families with young children.
In 2017, Catholic Charities completed Meheula Vista, a senior affordable housing development in Mililani Mauka. On Maui, in 2020, it opened Kahului Lani, a rental housing complex for low-income seniors.
And in 2019, Catholic Charities’ Lanakila Multi-Purpose Center celebrated 50 years of keeping seniors healthy and active.
Then came the pandemic. In 2020-2021 Catholic Charities assisted the state and counties with COVID-19 rent and mortgage relief services, distributing nearly $108 million to more than 19,990 households statewide, preventing what could have been a new tsunami of homelessness.
And so it goes. For 75 years, Catholic Charities Hawaii has, paraphrasing Pope Francis, “looked into the eyes of the discarded people” and, “provoked by the faces of the poor,” has been “drawn into their suffering” to action.
Today, the organization affects the lives of more than 80,000 people a year with compassion, dignity, social justice and a commitment to excellence through services and advocacy.
But Catholic Charities Hawaii’s 75th anniversary is not a time to dwell on accomplishments, as accomplished as those years have been, but a time to express gratitude — gratitude for the privilege of accompanying Jesus in the poor, the homeless, the downtrodden, the stranger, the migrant, the elderly, the vulnerable, the weak, the lonely, the discarded, the forgotten, the desperate, the hungry, the abused, the lost and the orphaned.
For each one is a child of God.
