Isle priest, respected veteran of parish, diocesan, religious life
Msgr. Alan A. Nagai, an island priest for 56 years who served in 10 parishes and several high diocesan positions, died June 18 at Straub Medical Center in Honolulu after a brief illness. He was 81. He was retired and living in Honolulu.
A vigil of the deceased will be celebrated at 6 p.m., July 15, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace preceded by visitation and viewing at 5 p.m. His funeral Mass is 10 a.m., July 16, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Pearl City with visitation and viewing beginning at 9 a.m. Bishop Larry Silva will preside at the funeral. Msgr. Terrence Watanabe will give the homily. Burial is at 2 p.m. at Hawaiian Memorial Park in Kaneohe.
Father Nagai was first a priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts who later became a diocesan priest. In addition to serving as an associate pastor and pastor over the course of five decades, he was also the diocese’s vicar general, moderator of the curia, vicar for priests and a member of various administrative committees and councils.
Vicar general Father Gary Secor described Father Nagai as a priest “well respected by the clergy as well as by the bishop.”
“His number of years in parish assignments helped him to be aware of the challenges priests and parishioners face and, I believe, he always tried to be pastorally sensitive,” Father Secor said.
Father Secor said Father Nagai was also “known to be very committed to stewardship and was a pioneer in that area in our diocese.”
“He will be missed,” the vicar general said.
Father Nagai was born Albert Nagai in Kilauea, Kauai, on Jan. 11, 1933, one of five children. At age 4 he moved with his family to Oahu where his father worked for the Kahuku Sugar Mill and his mother was a teacher at Kahuku Elementary and High Schools.
After completing Kahuku Elementary and Intermediate Schools, he attended St. Louis High School in Kaimuki, hitchhiking daily over the old Pali Road, according to a 1981 magazine interview.
At the urging of his pastor, Nagai entered Sacred Hearts Seminary in Hauula after high school.
“It will always be a mystery as to why I was chosen to be a priest,” Father Nagai wrote on the occasion of his 50th anniversary of ordination. “I often wonder if I would ever have had the nerve to aspire after the priesthood if my pastor had not imposed upon me.”
He said the idea initially “shocked” him.
He was with the Sacred Hearts Congregation for 14 years — eight years in formation, 12 years with religious vows, six of them as a priest — a fact he did not advertise too loudly later in life.
But it was a period of his life he valued as he explained in a 2001 letter to the editor of the Hawaii Catholic Herald.
“I shall always treasure the spiritual formation they [the Sacred Hearts Congregation] gave me, especially in regards to poverty and obedience. I guess I shall always remain a ‘religious’ in that way, not to mention other basic, spiritual values that I shall retain until death — God willing,”
“I’m convinced that my transition to the diocesan priesthood was the result of God’s gracious providence at work, that I ended up where I really belonged. I shall always remain, however, a product of my mixed background, a diocesan priest with religious training,” he said.
He became a diocesan priest in 1967.
Albert Nagai took the religious name Alan when he entered the Sacred Hearts community and kept it for the rest of his life.
He studied at the seminary in Hauula and then at Queen of Peace Mission Seminary in Jaffrey, N.H., and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
After his ordination at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu on June 14, 1958, he taught at Sacred Hearts Seminary in Hauula from 1958 to 1964.
For the next 40 years, he worked as a parish priest, serving at some parishes more than once. He was pastor of St. Rita, Nanakuli, Our Lady of Sorrows, Wahiawa; St. Sophia, Molokai; Our Lady of Good Counsel, Pearl City; St. Jude, Makakilo; St. Stephen, Nuuanu and Blessed Sacrament, Pauoa Valley. He also was assigned to other places as an associate pastor or administrator.
Bishop Joseph A. Ferrario in 1989 named him vicar general, the highest diocesan administrator after the bishop. He was also appointed moderator of the curia and vicar for priests.
Father Nagai served on the Priests’ Senate, the Presbyteral Council, the diocesan finance committee and the diocesan administrative council and took the jobs of director of Parish Renewal Experience and director of Stewardship Education.
On May 21, 1993, Bishop Ferrario announced his elevation to the title of monsignor along with three other priests. It was not a designation he preferred using.
Father Nagai commented on his calling to the priesthood six years ago with typical self-depreciating humor. “I underwent eight years of seminary formation to discern whether or not I had a vocation. I was relatively certain only when I was ordained, not before then. I have never had any strong desire or aspiration for any other career or vocation. Whether or not I have been a worthy priest, one thing is certain: I would have done far worse doing anything else.”
“There are Catholics who are under the false impression that God only chooses the ‘elite’ (whatever that is!) for the priesthood,” he said. “In reality, priests form a good cross-section of the Catholic family, from the top to the bottom and everything in between. I can only hope that I’m among the ‘in-betweens.’”
Father Nagai is survived by his sister Therese Midori Nagai of Yonkers, N.Y.; 10 nieces and nephews, numerous grandnieces and grandnephews, and a great grandniece and grandnephew.
