By Lisa Dahm
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Though 2026 saw the conclusion of the Jubilee Year of Hope, it also marked the beginning of another jubilee year — the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi.
From Jan. 10 to Jan. 10, 2027, Catholics are invited to celebrate a Year of St. Francis, according to a decree issued by a Vatican tribunal known as the Apostolic Penitentiary that deals with matters of conscience.
The decree, published by the Franciscan Friars, stated that Pope Leo XIV’s hope for the jubilee celebration is that Christians, “following the example of the Saint of Assisi,” might themselves “become a model of holiness of life and a constant witness of peace.”
As part of the jubilee, Catholics can obtain a plenary indulgence (the removal of temporal punishment due to sin) for themselves or for someone who is deceased by fulfilling specific conditions, such as making a sacramental confession within eight days of receiving Eucharist during Mass and praying for the intentions of the pope.
The faithful can also make a pilgrimage to “any Franciscan church or place of worship dedicated to St. Francis anywhere in the world, where one renews one’s profession of faith, through the recitation of the Creed, to reaffirm one’s Christian identity,” according to the decree.
Holy Trinity Church in Kuliouou has been named the Diocese of Honolulu’s pilgrimage site for the jubilee year. There the faithful will find a first-class relic of St. Francis — a sliver of the saint’s bone — that Holy Trinity’s pastor, Capuchin Franciscan Father Mike Dalton, has carried with him for decades.
“It was given to me when I was in seminary by one of our older friar priests, and he said, ‘I want to pass this on to you. Make sure that someday it gets displayed,’” Father Dalton said. “Then fast-forward 38 years after ordination, I finally have an opportunity.”
Father Dalton said the church is open for veneration of the relic before or after all Masses, and all are welcome to visit. Outside of Mass times, people may go the rectory, and a staff member will open the church.
He said people often assume St. Francis was a priest.
“He was a deacon,” Father Dalton said. “He didn’t feel himself worthy enough” — possibly because he thought preaching the word of God was how he could witness to the faith and to other Christians who wanted to get close to Christ.
Father Dalton was drawn to the Capuchin Franciscan order when he was growing up in upstate New York, observing visiting friars who would come to his small town on weekends to assist the priest.
“It was their joyfulness, and whenever I asked them what causes this, they would always say, ‘trying to imitate the joyfulness of Francis,’” he said.
The life of St. Francis
St. Francis was born in Assisi around 1181 and was originally named Giovanni, though his father changed his first name to Francesco.
His father was a wealthy merchant, and Francis led a comfortable life. But one day, during prayer before a cross in a San Damiano chapel, Francis heard Christ tell him to rebuild his house, which was falling down.
Despite coming from a wealthy family, Francis gave up all his possessions and began begging for money to support his work, living in poverty and humility. He wore sackcloth and sandals and had a tonsure, a ritual shaving of the center of the scalp.
Two years before his death in 1226, Francis received the stigmata — wounds on his hands, feet and side. Pope Gregory IX canonized him in 1228.
Father Dalton said that in the face of adversity or when addressing daily problems, he recommends praying the words from the prayer of St. Francis: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” This advice applies to people from all vocations — single, married, ordained or any religious vocation.
“If you’re not living the peace of the good news, something’s wrong — something’s missing, and I think that’s the Franciscan charism, that all vocations in all states of life should have and should cherish and should celebrate,” Father Dalton said.
“I try personally to take that initial enthusiasm that I saw in the friars that came and served our parish, and that’s been my banner, if you will, that I walk or run under,” he added. “To bring that joyfulness to the parishioners, and let the people know that they’re important, they’re needed and they’re loved. That’s so important.”
Following in his footsteps
In addition to two Capuchin Franciscan priests — Father Dalton is joined by Father Paulo Kosaka, pastor of St. Rita Church in Nanakuli — the Diocese of Honolulu is home to 24 Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities.
As of 2023, when the order celebrated its 140th anniversary in Hawaii, 291 Franciscan sisters have served in the islands since 1883. That’s when Mother Marianne Cope and six other sisters arrived from Syracuse, New York, to answer a call from the Hawaiian Kingdom to care for patients with Hansen’s disease, then called leprosy.
Franciscan Sister Joan of Arc Souza said that while attending Saint Francis School in Honolulu, she was drawn to the sisters for their evident charism of joy. She said the sisters always participated in their students’ lives, talked to them in the hallways, laughed with them and attended their games. Their actions of accepting and including their students exemplified the work of their patron saint.
“He was a very simple man,” Sister Souza said of St. Francis. “His emphasis was on the vow of poverty, but also joyfulness, and that’s what I experienced when I went to Saint Francis High School. Our sisters were happy women.”
After graduating from Saint Francis in 1961 and entering the Franciscan Sisters the same year, Sister Souza returned to the school twice — first as chair of its religion department and then as head of school for nearly three decades.
She now lives with 12 other sisters at The Plaza in Kaneohe, where they, like St. Francis, bring their charism to a broader lay community.
“He did what he could to make the world a better place,” she said. “If we all put on just a little bit of the mind of Francis, we wouldn’t be into so many wars.”
Indeed, in a Jan. 10 letter to the ministers general of the Conference of the Franciscan Family, Pope Leo said St. Francis’ message of peace was needed now more than ever.
“In this age, marked by so many seemingly interminable wars, by internal and social divisions that create mistrust and fear, he continues to speak. Not because he offers technical solutions, but because his life points to the authentic source of peace,” the pope wrote.
That peace, he added, “is not limited to the relations between human beings,” but extends to “the entire family of Creation.”
OSV News contributed reporting.
Prayer of St. Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love.
where there is injury, pardon.
where there is doubt, faith.
where there is despair, hope.
where there is darkness, light.
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Above: Top, Holy Trinity Church in Kuliouou is a pilgrimage site during St. Francis of Assisi’s jubilee year; bottom, Capuchin Franciscan Father Mike Dalton, pastor of Holy Trinity Church, has had a first-class relic of St. Francis since his days as a seminarian. The reliquary inside the church holds it and a number of other relics. (Photos by Celia K. Downes / Hawaii Catholic Herald)