By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
About a week after the meal ministry at St. Augustine Parish in Waikiki stopped giving out free lunches to the hungry on July 14, bowing to pressure from Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, it has restarted the service “differently.”
That’s the adjective St. Augustine’s pastor used in a July 26 email message to the Hawaii Catholic Herald to describe the move “to serve on property instead of on the sidewalk.”
“After making the decision to close, we got so many positive responses for the work that we do,” said Sacred Hearts Father Lane Akiona.
“These overwhelming responses on social media, letters, emails, phone calls, and seeing the people come by when we were closed asking if we were serving, it broke my heart,” he said.
“So after talking with my staff, volunteers and parishioners, I decided to reopen differently from the past,” he said. “After consulting a lawyer with ties to St. Augustine, we decided to serve on property instead of on the sidewalk.”
“This was our practice before COVID hit,” Father Akiona said. But “it is evident that the mayor wanted to close us down completely.”
The pastor said that he told the mayor he would stop the sidewalk ministry while looking for “a creative way of continuing to serve the needy.”
He said the meal service will strive to “build a relationship of trust with our clients, so that when they are ready, we can help them with housing, employment, medical assistance, etc.”
In that regard, “our percentage of success is not high, but it’s realistic in helping one person at a time.”
Called Aunty Carmen’s Kitchen, the feeding program has been giving free hot meals on weekdays to the hungry for 50 years, serving about 50 people a day and 1,800 meals a month.
The mayor opposed the lunch program because a minority number of the people coming for meals had criminal records and had been recorded committing petty crimes in Waikiki.
“Having that go on in the middle of Waikiki is not good for business,” he said in a recent podcast. “You’re enabling them.”
Other issues included trash left by those served and their visibility to hotel guests in the area. Food had been given out at the church gate on Ohua Avenue, across the street from the entrance to the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa.
Only around 10 out of the 40 or 50 people who come to the lunch program are the issue, Father Akiona said.
“It’s just a handful of people [with criminal records], but the other people who really need our service are the ones who will suffer,” the priest said when he temporarily shuttered the ministry.
Father Akiona said he is keeping Bishop Larry Silva informed about all the developments.
In a July 14 statement on the soup kitchen closure, Bishop Silva wrote, “I am grateful to all who have been involved in taking care of our brothers and sisters at Aunty Carmen’s Kitchen at St. Augustine Church, Waikiki.”
“It is always our kuleana to care for those who are most in need,” he said.
