It has taken almost 100 years, but the Catholics of Haiku, Maui, finally own the land under their church.
According to Marlene De Costa, the director of the diocesan Land Asset Management Office, the Takaichi Miyamoto Estate on Dec. 31 sold to the Diocese of Honolulu the north Maui property on which St. Rita Church has stood since the 1920s.
The price for the .61 acres, including closing costs, which the diocese agreed to pay, is “$429,000 rounded off,” said De Costa.
According to diocesan finance officer Lisa Sakamoto, the diocese fronted the money for St. Rita Parish, which will pay it back. She said the parish already has about $150,000 in savings for the purchase of land.
The parish had pursued the acquisition off and on for the past 10 years, but no deal could be made with the landowner, according to Father Patrick Freitas who was pastor of the parish from 2007 to 2012 and is now retired.
De Costa gives Father Freitas the primary credit for making the purchase possible.
She said that, where earlier offers by the diocese and parish to buy the property were unsuccessful, it was “Father Pat appealing to them [the landowners] personally” that did it.
The church’s 99-year lease on the land — at one dollar a year — was due to expire on May 31, 2022, and De Costa said that if the land could not be acquired, the parish would probably have had to move to another location.
The parish administrator Father Rufino Gepiga announced news of the purchase to parishioners at Masses over the Jan. 5-6 weekend.
“They were very happy,” he told the Hawaii Catholic Herald.
He said that the old-time, faithful parishioners were especially overjoyed at the news, one to the point of tears.
“Many thanks go to Father Pat. He shepherded the whole thing,” he said. “His mild-mannered and steady way paid off.”
Father Gepiga said the parish owes a very special thanks to its patron St. Rita to whom the priest and parishioners appealed with prayers and a novena.
He explained that the saint is a patroness of “impossible cases.”
The parish administrator said that the parishioners are now “up to the challenge” of raising several hundred thousand dollars to pay back the diocese.
“We have a big responsibility ahead of us,” he said. “But they are very optimistic.”
Haiku is a former sugar plantation district that converted to pineapple in 1921. Over the years, Haiku and the surrounding areas were served by a number of Catholic churches including St. Ann in Hamakuapoko, St. Gabriel in Keanae, Holy Rosary in Paia and St. Augustine in Kailua. St. Ann and St. Augustine no longer exist.
St. Rita was built in the 1920s by Sacred Hearts Father Jules Verhaeghe. It was first a mission of Holy Rosary and then of St. Joseph, Makawao. It was elevated to parish status in 1950.
The land was originally leased in 1923 for 99 years from the Maui Agriculture Co., a subsidiary of Alexander and Baldwin. The leasehold was sold to Takaichi Miyamoto in 1944.
The parish had already owned a piece of property adjacent to, and about one fifth the size of, the newly acquired plot. The rectory straddles both properties.
Father Freitas said that operating a parish on leased land could be difficult.
For one thing, he said, “if you wanted to make any addition to the property, you would have to get permission from the ownership.”
Temporary land ownership can result in “no sense of permanency,” he said, which could create a hesitancy “in investing as a parish faith community” and a weakened parish “stability.”
As the expiration of the lease loomed, Father Freitas renewed efforts to buy the property, initiating a community petition of about 300 signatures, writing letters to the Miyamoto family and finally meeting on Oahu with family representatives. Offers and counter-offers were made and a price agreed upon. By the time Father Freitas retired last year, he had the groundwork of a deal. The diocese took over negotiations from there.
The diocese owns the land under nearly all of its 66 parish and 27 mission churches. However, about seven churches remain on leased land, including property owned by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the U.S. military, the Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities.
St. Rita is a small rural community, getting smaller. The 2012 October count, the annual tally of weekend Mass-goers, reported 111 people in church on an average weekend, only 27 of whom were children. Fifteen years ago the total was 285.
Father Freitas, who was born on Maui, described the Haiku parish community as an “eclectic community” of Mainlanders, locals with pineapple plantation roots including Portuguese and Hawaiians.
The parish includes many professionals and retirees, he said, but “not too many youth.”
St. Rita has one tiny mission, St. Gabriel, about 25 winding miles east on the Hana Highway in Keanae.
