Hundreds of island Catholic youth are heading to Sydney, Australia, next month for World Youth Day

By Anna Weaver | Hawaii Catholic Herald

The groups going Here, by island, are the Hawaii parishes and groups sending pilgrims to World Youth Day OAHU St. Michael Parish, Waialua/Sts. Peter & Paul Mission, Waimea Sts. Peter and Paul Parish, Ala Moana St. Augustine Tongan Society, Waikiki Holy Trinity, Kuliouou Holy Trinity School Band, Kuliouou St. Francis Show Choir St. Rita Parish, Nanakuli/Sacred Heart, Waianae St. Patrick Parish, Kaimuki St. John the Baptist, Kalihi Our Lady of Good Counsel, Pearl City St. Augustine Episcopal Church BIG ISLAND St. Joseph Parish, Hilo St. Theresa Parish, Mountain View Sacred Heart Parish, Hawi St. Benedict Parish, Honaunau Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish, Papaikou MAUI St. Theresa Tongan Community, Kihei, St. Joseph Parish, Makawao/St. Rita Parish, Haiku, Maria Lanakila Tongan Youth Ministry, Lahaina Maria Lanakila Youth Ministry, Lahaina, MOLOKAI Molokai Catholic Community (Blessed Damien Parish) KAUAI St. Catherine Parish, Kapaa

At the close of the last day of school, June 6, at Holy Trinity School in Kuliouou, as parents picked up their children and teachers hugged their students goodbye, a handful of junior high students were up in math and music teacher Anne Martin’s second floor classroom practicing for their international debut.

The Holy Trinity School Band has been invited to perform at World Youth Day 2008 next month in Sydney, Australia.

That’s not too shabby for a band that didn’t exist this time last year.

Martin created a band class for all sixth to eighth graders at the small east Honolulu school after the school received a general flier last spring announcing a search for student bands to perform during the global gathering of Catholic youth.

Fellow teacher Shelly Mecum, not one to let once-in-a-lifetime opportunities slip away, urged Martin to take up the challenge.

Five of those beginning band students will travel with four adults to Sydney to perform at some point during the three days of activities, July 15-20, that culminates with an outdoor Mass presided over by Pope Benedict XVI.

“It was odd how well it worked out, like it was meant to be,” Martin said.

Not only did she start a band program from scratch, renting some instruments and receiving a few donated ones, but the band had to raise funds to afford the trip.

As far as where and when they will perform, “we’re flying by faith,” she said. “I think if they at least get the experience of performing once, it’s worth it.”

She asked the Australian coordinators arranging the musical performances multiple times if they really wanted a beginning band. They did.

The Holy Trinity group won’t be the only school group from Hawaii. They will travel Down Under with 13 members of the St. Francis Show Choir.

Seventh grader Jessie Watkins said, “This is our first year and we’ve come very far.”

The diocesan group

The Holy Trinity Band is just one of many Hawaii groups that have had a lot to accomplish to get to World Youth Day.

The Diocese of Honolulu is sponsoring a travel group of 103 people, including seven Episcopalians. Patty Kaluau has been given the difficult task of arranging the travel, food, accommodations and other particulars involved in sending a large group to a week in a foreign country.

The group will be staying at hostels and other venues in Australia. Forty-five people in the diocesan group will also be visiting New Zealand for a few days before arriving in Sydney.

St. Catherine Parish in Kapaa, Kauai, is sending six for whom youthfulness is more attitude than age. According to one of them, Yvonne Pascual, the group ranges in age from 37 to 60 and is looking forward to seeing the pope and Australia.

“I think there’s going to be such a Holy Spirit feeling there,” Pascual said.

Jordan PeBenito, who goes to Sts. Peter and Paul Mission in Waimea, on Oahu’s north shore, will be traveling with the combined St. Michael and Sts. Peter and Paul group. He said his group’s parking fundraiser — on weekends since last May they’ve asked for a $5 donation per car to park in the mission’s lot across from the legendary Waimea Bay surfing beach — has helped cover the majority of the group’s expenses.

This will be PeBenito’s first World Youth Day. While he doesn’t know quite what to expect, he said he’s most looking forward to the outdoor sleepover at Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney before Mass with the pope on July 20.

“Just meeting other people from around the world, and seeing that our faith and our religion is so good, and how we’re all united” will be exciting, he said.

Independent travelers

Some 125 Hawaii World Youth Day-bound Catholics chose to make their own travel arrangements through their parishes or other pilgrim groups.

One of the larger independent groups is being headed by Big Islander Edwina Fujimoto. It includes 10 Catholics from the Big Island parishes of St. Benedict in Honaunau, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Papaikou, St. Joseph in Hilo, and Sacred Heart in Hawi, plus 22 Tongan Youth Ministry members from Maria Lanakila Parish in Lahaina, Maui.

Wanna buy sweetbread? You name it, they’ve done it. Here are some of the fundraising activities by Hawaii World Youth Day groups to get to Sydney. Selling leis, CDs, homemade sweetbread, Molokai bread, huli huli chicken, kalua pig, Krispy Kreme donuts, Cinnabon’s, Mike’s Bakery items, cookies, Big Island Candy, World’s Finest Chocolates, pretzels, Jamba Juice, and Papa John’s, Flatbread, and Pizza Hut pizza Spaghetti and soup dinners A golf tournament Raffles Car washes Bake sales Making and selling wire recycling baskets Collecting aluminum cans and recyclables Rummage sales Soliciting donations for cars parked in a church lot

Fujimoto said that people in the group who had been to the last World Youth Day in Germany in 2005 wished they had participated in the “homestay” program there, where pilgrims stayed with local Germans during the World Youth Day events.

“We wanted to try all these things from the country’s perspective, experiencing different foods,” Fujimoto said. “We want to know more about their culture, their church, just who they are and how they are in the Catholic Church in Australia.”

So the Big Island/Maui group will spend July 8-13 at a “Days in the Diocese” program in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle with 4,000 other pilgrims before heading south to Sydney. One big event will be a “Corroboree,” the Aboriginal word for gathering.

In return for the Aussie hospitality, they are planning on bringing lots of Hawaii goodies. The Maui group will perform Tongan and Hawaiian dances.

Big Island group member Catherine Galan, 17, said she’s going to World Youth Day “because it brings you closer to your faith and it teaches you how other people and cultures celebrate Mass.”

Another independent group is Maria Lanakila’s Youth Ministry group of 18 led by the parish youth ministry leader Maka Secretario and her assistant Peter Acpal.

The 18 mostly high school-aged pilgrims going to Sydney had one last Molokai Bread fundraiser the week of June 8. “Time went by quickly,” Secretario said, with all the lei, chocolate, kalua pig, and CD-selling they’ve been doing.

“[The teens] feel that if they are away from Hawaii and with Catholics from other countries that this trip is going to strengthen their faith,” she said. “And of course the most exciting thing is getting to see the pope.

Travelers from all over

Of the Hawaii residents traveling to Sydney there will be at least four priests, plus Bishop Larry Silva.

The bishop will be traveling with the diocesan group to and from Australia. In an e-mail to the Hawaii Catholic Herald, he wrote that bishops going to WYD have been invited to lead half-hour catechesis sessions followed by Mass at different sites in Sydney on July 16, 17 and 18. His will be for English-speaking participants.

“The three or four days before I leave for Sydney, I will probably be spending a good bit of time welcoming groups from other U.S. dioceses who are going to stop in Hawaii before continuing on to Sydney,” Bishop Silva said.

Groups from three Mainland dioceses will be stopping in Honolulu en route. The Texas dioceses of Laredo and Fort Worth will have 48 and 23 people respectively headed for Hawaii, including Laredo’s Bishop James A. Tamayo. The Diocese of Rockville Centre from Long Island, N.Y., is sending 103.

To welcome the visitors on their Hawaii layover, Holy Trinity parishioner Dominic Olaso, with the help of Jeff Chang and Shantel Hunt, is planning an Aloha Spirit Youth Day on July 11.

The day-long gathering is tentatively scheduled to include morning Mass at St. Augustine Church in Waikiki followed by Hawaiian entertainment, prayer and Bible study, a talk on the history of the church in Hawaii, beach time, Hawaiian cultural classes like lei making, rosary on the beach and lots of food.

Many of the activities were suggested by the Mainland groups, including learning more about Blessed Damien and Marianne.

“This event will allow the people from the Mainland to see what the true culture of Hawaii is about,” said Olaso, who is the diocesan Youth and Young Adult Board’s East Honolulu vicariate coordinator.

It will also allow Hawaii pilgrims to mingle with Mainland ones, he said, while sharing their culture and “just being proud of who we are.”

Hawaii vigil weekend

People that can’t make it to Sydney don’t have to feel left out. They are invited to a weekend of diocese-hosted events, July 18-20, at St. Stephen Diocesan Center coinciding with the main events in Australia.

Paulette Gomes, of the Office of Diocesan Services, and Franciscan Sister Marlene Miller, the director of religious ministries for Kaneohe Marine Corps Base Chapel, are planning an outdoor Stations of the Cross, special speakers, rosary recitations, fellowship, Mass, and a live videoconference with World Youth Day attendees in Sydney. Visiting Catholic singer Vince Ambrosetti will also be performing and leading prayer.