VIRIDITAS: SOUL GREENING
Interviewed by Sister Malia Dominica Wong, OP
Hawaii Catholic Herald
My first missionary assignment in Hawaii took me to the island of Oahu where I became a teacher at St. Anthony School in Kalihi. Following that ministry, I was assigned to the Maui Children’s Home on the island of Maui. In my work with the children there, we rarely talked about our families. One day, I happened to show one of the girls a picture of my mother sitting in an easy chair in the backyard. She asked me, “Do you have a mother?” I replied, “Yes, I do.” Her response was, “Then why are you in a children’s home?”
I really enjoy working with children. Following the closure of the home, I got interested in working with children from broken homes. Back on Oahu, I pursued working with the family court. I went through civil service training and was accepted as a probation officer. My goal was to keep children, young people that got in trouble with the police, out of the court system.
As a Maryknoll religious, we have no regulations on what we can or cannot do in ministry, especially in the interest of helping young people stay out of or get out of trouble. About 10 years later, I needed to resign from family court as I was elected to my religious congregation’s regional governing board. Thus, I began volunteering at a home for battered women and children. This eventually led to part-time work and then a full-time position.
In my working with others to help women who were abused, we began to think of how violence could be prevented. This led to my co-leading a group working with abusive men. They were all men who had been in prison at least for a weekend, and we had the court order behind us. We could really see an improvement in the men. One man, who I used to see at church on Sundays, told me how much it meant to him to be in the group.
During the last phase of my ministry in Hawaii, some Maryknollers moved away from the city to the more rural Waianae coast to work with the native Hawaiian population and the poor there. We did all sorts of work with the people, including working with school children at risk of abuse. Once, we showed a film in a classroom of a homeless boy. School children became a little more sympathetic toward those who were homeless and those whom they might have teased.
I really feel that I was led by the spirit to do the work that I have done. Maybe it was because I grew up with four brothers and three sisters that I was very comfortable working with those that I have.
To the people of Hawaii, I say, “Keep up the aloha spirit.”
Sister Rita Kane is a Maryknoll Sister of St. Dominic from northwestern Illinois. She served in Hawaii from 1950 to 2008 and is 75 years professed. She will be 99 years old in September and resides at Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic in Ossining, New York.
