Mary Adamski: Music makes bishop’s legacy come alive

View from the pew

Music is accompanying memories as I start down a reminiscing path about a very special person who has affected all our lives for the past several years.

I am hearing a congregation gustily singing the Litany of Saints, not as the dirge-like traditional ritual, but sung to a Hawaiian tempo, accompanied by drum and ipu.

I’m remembering getting chicken skin as “O Oe Io,” a haunting hymn-chant, invoking the Holy Spirit as a soaring bird, echoed off the walls of an ancient Roman basilica.

And then “Damien the Blessed” and other songs about Father Damien wafting over a shady lawn outside the Kalaupapa church where local pilgrims attended Mass at the finale of the celebration of the canonization of the saint who chose to be pastor to people banished because they had Hansen’s disease, also called leprosy.

Those events come to mind as I think of how fortunate we were when the pope decided to send a “local boy” with deep family roots in Hawaii back to the islands as our bishop 20 years ago.

“I’m the pastor of the diocese, not just a bureaucrat,” Bishop Larry Silva told me in my first interview with him in July 2005. “I think I’m a good listener. I try to be.”

Born in Hawaii and a descendant of Portuguese immigrants, he was a child when his parents, the late Richard and Catherine Alves Silva, moved to California. He came back to Hawaii with 30 years of experience as a pastor of 11 parishes in the Oakland diocese and service as vicar general there.

The bishop chose “Witness to Jesus” as the motto for his coat of arms and “sees a message in it for the Catholics who have lapsed in religious practice,” I wrote as the religion writer of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

“I think we Catholics have such a rich, complex way of living our faith — many organizations, parishes, ministries — that we can easily forget they are all about relating to the living Jesus, who is still with us, whose presence we experience in the Eucharist.

“It is not just seeking an emotional thrill. It is not a consumer event; it is something to go to as a people in need of remembering how much we are loved by Jesus Christ, by God.”

That is a theme we have heard from our teacher bishop in homilies and columns for all these years. It rang a bell with me, who tends to get emotional — teary at certain scriptural readings and hymns, and channeling the late gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, without the blessing of her rich voice, swaying and clapping along with the choir.

Besides being a respectful Catholic interviewing the bishop back then, I was also a journalist trying to prod him into saying something for a headline. So I asked the religion-and-politics question which even back then roiled some Catholic clergy and authoritarian-minded laity: What should the church do with Catholic politicians whose public acts, such as support of abortion, are contrary to their faith? And that was years ago, before issues such as same-sex marriage, transgender genetic engineering and God know what all are part of the public conversation.

Bishop Silva’s pastoral approach was clear on the uncomfortable subject. He said banishing the politician, or the person who votes for him, from receiving Communion or other sacraments — as a few bishops had advocated — is a punishment that is rarely justified.

Christ’s teaching “is a calling to continued conversion, and that means a continued relationship,” he said. “So to cut it off, then you have in some ways cut off the possibilities of conversion.”

He said he favored continuing in conversation with the errant Catholic. “The truth will win out at the end…if the truth is understood.”

The journalist also tried to get him to comment on the previous bishop, who was seen by some clergy and lay people as disheartening with a “from the top down” style. The new bishop declined to go there.

He said, “There is too much work to do preaching the Gospel for us to be at odds with each other. There has always been adversity in the church.”

Many reasons to celebrate

One thing the Catholic Church has had centuries to master is pomp and ceremony. That was true at the ordination of Bishop Silva on July 21, 2005.

The Blaisdell Center Arena was turned into a cathedral for a day to accommodate the crowd of about 6,000 people who attended. The Vatican ambassador to the United States read the letter from Pope Benedict XVI appointing Larry Silva as “shepherd of this diocese.”

The head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, former San Francisco Archbishop William Levada, presided and about 140 priests from the Hawaii and Oakland dioceses attended.

Four of the bishop’s siblings were there, along with about 50 family members from Hawaii and the mainland, some having roles in the ceremony. Local politicians were there. So were about 30 ministers of Orthodox Christian and Protestant denominations, Buddhist clergy and other religious leaders.

The symbols of office bestowed on the bishop included his shepherd’s staff of carved koa wood. That was just one of many ways that touches of Hawaii were woven into church pageantry.

The large arena crowd was hushed during the solemn ceremony as he lay prostrate before the altar while the Litany of Saints was sung to a Hawaiian drumbeat. Levada anointed his forehead with oil and 18 other visiting bishops came forward to lay hands on his head.

Hushed — until the finale of the program. The crowd released its pent-up energy with laughter, whistles and cheers as a parade representing island ethnic cultures brought gifts forward: Portuguese sweet bread and wine, Tongan woven fiber lei, a Chinese bouquet of carved jade flowers and a tray of char siu bao.

There have been high notes and low times in the years since.

Every ordination of a new priest or deacon, the annual Easter baptisms of adult catechumens or the dedication of new housing for needy people is an alleluia moment. The closure of several schools and churches, and the years of closed doors and empty pews during the COVID-19 pandemic, are among the grim realities.

Nothing is so grim for any diocese to deal with than fallout from the past, as the plague of predatory priests from generations past became a modern public scandal. God bless the men who had to deal with it.

But what could raise the spirits of a bishop better than traveling to Rome for the canonization of a saint from his kuleana? Bishop Silva has had that pleasure twice — Father Damien De Veuster and Mother Marianne Cope — and last year, he forwarded to the Vatican the documentation for the canonization cause of Joseph Dutton, a Civil War veteran who spent 48 years serving the people of Kalaupapa.

History and housing

A highlight of my career as a reporter was to cover the Damien canonization ceremony in Rome in October 2009. Bishop Silva was the leader of about 500 Hawaii residents who attended the ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica. Eleven of the “historical” Kalaupapa patients — who had been sent to Kalaupapa before the quarantine was lifted in 1969 — had VIP seats for the Mass. Bishop Larry was at the altar with Pope Benedict XVI.

The Hawaii pilgrims spent several days beforehand on a tour that took us to other famous Catholic churches and shrines. We visited St. Paul Outside the Walls, a basilica that was built in the first century above the tomb of the martyred St. Paul. We walked in the footsteps of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy.

I confess that the memories I brought back from visits to those grandiose churches are overshadowed by the music brought to them by the choir and hula halau who were part of our entourage. To hear Hawaiian-language hymns sung and prayers chanted, echoing in the towering ceilings of the ancient European churches — wow. I have been playing a CD of “O Oe Io” while I’m writing, chicken skin again.

It was a strenuous pilgrimage in Italy, being herded on foot through cobbled streets in crowded Rome. We ate dinner together at various restaurants, with Bishop Silva taking turns to eat with different groups of us.

When we got back home, the Damien festivities continued for a crowd at Iolani Palace and a cluster of pilgrims fortunate to get a flight to Kalaupapa, where Bishop Silva was joined by Cardinal Godfried Danneels from Damien’s Belgian homeland at Mass.

“What I hope most of all with these celebrations is that we catch some of Damien’s spirit, his love of God and his dedication to those who are in need,” Bishop Silva said in an interview during that time. “We have an affordable housing task force looking at involving people who are modern-day outcasts. If they don’t have somebody to help them, with decent values, help with a job, get social skills to live productively in society, they are back to old habits, bad choices and back in prison.”

“Damien was a very practical man. If there was a project, he just broke it down, figured out what needed to be done, went after the resources and did them.

“I always say the leader gets credit for doing things. We talk about Damien building houses (for patients), but he didn’t do it alone. We can romanticize Damien. He did not accomplish all that he is said to have accomplished by himself. I think Damien was a leader and leadership means getting your hands dirty, and it means getting other people involved. We need leaders but also need the people who will do the simple but very, very important and necessary tasks.”

As the saying goes, he practices what he preaches. Hope Services Hawaii, a nonprofit agency that helps the homeless on Hawaii island, was launched in 2010. He blessed Mercy House, a Windward Oahu home for women transitioning out of prison, in 2016. He launched and blessed the Catholic Charities Hawaii Meheula Vista low-income housing project in Mililani Mauka in 2017. He dedicated the Kahului Lani senior affordable-housing site on Maui in 2022.

Highlights of his 20 years as bishop were published in the July 31 Herald. And we’ll watch the list continue to grow, hopefully for many more years.