A volunteer helps mount the statue of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Sacred Heart Parish cemetery in Pahoa of the Big Island on Oct. 5. (Photo courtesy of Deacon Jim Dougherty)
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
That is not an apparition glowing above the Sacred Heart Church cemetery in Pahoa on the Big Island. But the sudden Oct. 5 appearance of the larger-than-life white image of Our Blessed Mother does have a bit of mystery about it.
According to Deacon Jim Dougherty of St. Theresa Church in Mountain View, the statue was first delivered more than 10 years ago to St. Joseph Church in Hilo where it remained wrapped and crated with no one to claim it.
“Apparently,” said Deacon Dougherty, “word of this mysterious statue got back” to Sacred Heart Church and the pastor there, Somascan Father John Molina, but not before a few other twists in the story.
Father Molina tells his own version of the statue’s tale in his Oct. 16 Sunday bulletin. The statue had been commissioned to a Chinese stone crafting company by the late Jonathan Perreira of Oahu, son of the late Isabelle and John Perreira.
Only problem, he said, it was supposed to be a statue of St. Marianne Cope. And, he said, it was indeed intended for St. Joseph Church or School in Hilo.
But the statue is not that of the Molokai saint but of the Blessed Mother, “identified by public acclamation,” said Father Molina, as “Our Lady of Sorrows.”
For some reason, St. Joseph Parish and School could not find a suitable place on their campuses for the seemingly abandoned image of Our Lady.
(Perreira evidently had commissioned several other statues, another of St. Marianne, which was installed at the now-closed St. Francis School on Oahu in 2011, and a statue of St. Damien that went to Damien Memorial School, and one of saint-candidate Joseph Dutton, sent to St. Joseph Mission Church on Molokai.)
With the original purchaser of the statue deceased, Father Molina said, it ultimately fell on Perreira’s nephew, Mike Tavares, to decide its fate.
“His ultimate goal was to have the statue brought to Pahoa to find place for it,” Father Molina said, and with it, “to honor his grandmother” Isabelle Andrade Perreira, and also Remigio Salazar, in memory of “their outstanding parish services.”
But before it would arrive in Pahoa, it took a detour for a few years. According to Deacon Dougherty, it had earlier caught the eye of the pastor of St. Theresa Church in Mountain View, Blessed Sacrament Father Samuel Loterte, who didn’t know its background and thought it would make an attractive addition in front of his church, visible to traffic on Highway 11 going to and from Volcano. So he had it transported there.
But then it stood next to Father Loterte’s garage, unpacked, for a few more years.
When Father Molina eventually learned of it, he asked Jim Manion, chairman of the Sacred Heart Parish’s building, planning and maintenance committee to arrange for its transport to Pahoa, its proper destination.
St. Theresa parishioners Allen and Roberta Mendes, whose company transports championship horses all over the world, offered to move it for free, Deacon Dougherty said. But because of the weight of the statue, which is made of marble and its shipping crate having rotted from long exposure to the rainy Mountain View environment, the Mendes in turn hired Kona Transport to do the job and paid the bill.
According to Father Molina, four Sacred Heart Parish volunteers constructed a temporary platform overlooking the parish cemetery until a more stable base is built.
The pastor’s Sunday bulletin story adds a nice postscript. “The statue of Our Lady of Sorrows can now be seen and admired at her post near the 11th and 12th Stations of the parish’s Way of the Cross meditation trail, in her absolutely stunning posture of humility and supplication, praying for us and with us. The once ‘homeless’ statue has at last found shelter on the grounds of Sacred Heart Church, Pahoa, and hopefully, in the hearts of all.”
