By PEGGY MOEN
Honolulu Bishop Larry Silva visited the town of Lahaina on Tuesday, August 15 to celebrate Mass and meet survivors of the wildfires that he said “shockingly devastated” the town, according to a Catholic News Agency report by Daniel Payne.
While the scope of the crisis has been “overwhelming,” the response from the local community has been “remarkable,” the prelate told CNA. The bishop told CNA via email that he celebrated Mass at Kapalua, Maui, on that Sunday for about 200 Catholics gathered there.
“In order to arrive in Kapalua, we had to drive on the upper road above Lahaina town,” he said. “At several places along the road we saw spots that were destroyed by the fire, whether homes or businesses, it was hard to tell. We could also overlook Lahaina town, which was shockingly devastated.”
Law enforcement, including the National Guard, is keeping guard over Lahaina, the bishop said.
Silva said he heard numerous stories from parishioners “who lost one or more of their loved ones or neighbors, whose houses burned down, or who lost their livelihood.”
Due to the local loss of cellphone towers and Internet coverage, Silva said the assembly had not learned of Pope Francis’ message to the island expressing consolation and prayers. “I read the letter to them, and they were very grateful,” he said.
The bishop also confirmed stories of the astonishing survival of Maria Lanakila Catholic Church in Lahaina. “[The church] was miraculously spared, as was the rectory,” he said. “The adjacent convent, school, and hall were all burned, along with neighboring homes.”
To make a donation for the victims, please visit: https://www.
catholiccharitieshawaii.org/donate/
But who will intercede for them? If Hawaii has been burdened with exceptional challenges, it has also been blessed with extraordinary saints, particularly the three who served at the leper settlement on Molokai: Fr. Damien, Mother Marianne Cope, and Joseph Dutton — not yet canonized, but he has been given the designation of Servant of God.
Dutton, as an American layman, seems the most likely intercessor. Also, he, too, was endangered by natural forces in Hawaii, in a noted episode in 1927, near the end of his mortal life.
Eva K. Betz describes it this way in her classic book, Yankee at Molokai:
“A strange and fitful wind came and went all during Holy Week. Sometimes the sky was so threatening that it seemed a storm must break within the next few minutes. The long, oily swells of the ocean looked so fierce as they broke on the shore that one had the feeling of the sea being a ravening animal that wanted to cross the beach and prowl the land seeking its prey.”
A heavy downpour began on the evening of Holy Saturday.
“At five in the morning, the downpour, impossible as it seemed, grew even heavier and now, added to the tumult of the waters, was the booming crash of great rocks washed from their places in the pali and crashing to the ground below. Some of them, and the landslides which followed, would certainly destroy the vegetable and flower gardens on which Brother Joseph and his boys had worked so hard and long.”
And: “Brother Joseph stepped to the door of his little house. It was nearly Mass time and he wanted receive Communion today above all days.”
But he heard the voice of Fr. Pierre D’Orgeval, a chaplain:
“Brother Joseph! Brother Joseph! Don’t try to get out of the house.”
Eventually Brother Joseph did get out of the house, by wearing a big rubber cape that one of the brothers brought to him, and by climbing on the brother’s back. And he did make it to Mass.
Every day, Joseph Dutton — a Civil War veteran — would raise the U.S. flag on a pole outside his cottage on Molokai. Sometime after the Holy Saturday storm, Dutton, resting in bed, noticed storm clouds gathering again. Despite medical orders to stay in bed, he ran out the door to rescue the flag before the storm came.
But this last effort proved too much for him and he had to go to Honolulu to be hospitalized at St. Francis.
While there, according to Betz’s book, he would look forward to the afterlife, saying:
“I am looking forward to meeting my old friends, Father Damien and Mother Marianne. Oh, they did so much.”
Dutton died at St. Francis Hospital on March 26, 1931.
As The Wanderer went to press this week, the death toll on Maui was 111, with the number expected to rise as the burn zone continues to be searched.
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