VOLCANO AND TSUNAMI RELIEF By Anna Weaver Hawaii Catholic Herald Local Tongan Catholics recently sent three shipping containers back to their homeland to help family, friends and strangers who are still recovering from a volcanic eruption and its aftereffects. The idea for a shipment back to Tonga started with one family who had been saving […]
Hawaii parishes to take up emergency collection for Tongan disaster relief
By Anna Weaver Hawaii Catholic Herald The Diocese of Honolulu is asking parishes to take up an emergency second collection for Tonga on the weekend of Feb. 26 and 27. An underwater volcanic eruption that occurred close offshore from the island nation on Jan. 15 caused damaging tsunamis and rained down ash and other volcanic […]
Sacred Hearts Shelter continues to house elderly volcano evacuees
Anna Weaver Hawaii Catholic Herald Kilauea’s unprecedented eruption last year may have stopped, but elderly evacuees from the volcano’s destructive path continue to find a welcoming place at Sacred Heart Shelter in Pahoa on the Big Island. The complex is made up of 20 small homes, a communal cooking and dining pavilion, and bathroom facilities, […]
It took a village to raise a village
Sacred Heart Shelter, the mini-neighborhood of micro-homes for volcano evacuees, will be blessed June 30 By Patrick Downes Hawaii Catholic Herald The donation of land by the Diocese of Honolulu has motivated the creation of a neighborhood of micro-houses for families left homeless by Kilauea volcano. Under the leadership of HOPE Services Hawaii, an affiliate […]
St. Damien’s first assignment: ‘the district close to the big volcano’
By Patrick Downes Hawaii Catholic Herald “I was first placed in the district close to the big volcano, this ancient divinity of our Kanakas who to our day still has his adorers.” St. Damien wrote those words in 1865 in a letter to France describing his first missionary deployment (and incorrectly identifying the volcano diety […]
Parishioners displaced by lava ask for prayers
By Anna Weaver Hawaii Catholic Herald Sacred Heart, Pahoa, parishioners Paul and Rose Utes had to leave their home when lava from the Kilauea eruptions moved into their section of the Leilani Estates subdivision in Puna on the Big Island. At the time they heard the mandatory evacuation order, the couple, who own Black Rock […]
