The late Maryknoll Sister Grace Dorothy Lim created a connection of charity between a Catholic parish in Kalihi and a poor farming community in the Philippines.

Father Aaron Bamba, from the town of Burgos in the northern Philippine province of Pangasinan, is in Hawaii this month to reinforce that link.

It was in Burgos that Sister Grace Dorothy, a spirited woman with a mile-long list of accomplishments in the Diocese of Honolulu, spent the last two years of her life improving the conditions of poor people. She died there on Feb. 28, at age 82, working to the very end.

Father Bamba, the founder of a new society of priests who work with the poor, will celebrate a special Mass in Ilocano at 4:30 p.m., June 29, at St. Anthony Church in Kalihi to remember Sister Grace and to ask for support for the projects she started in his parish of St. Isidore the Farmer in Burgos. He will also be meeting with parishioners before and after the Mass.

Father Bamba met Sister Grace through his mother Vicenta Bamba, who is a member of the St. Anthony’s Antoniana Club, a group of parish women the Maryknoll Sister had organized years ago to do charitable work.

In 2006, he invited Sister Grace, who had retired from diocesan work in ethnic ministries and as a diocesan tribunal official, to move to Pangasinan to help the tribunal in the Diocese of Alaminos and to help run his vicariate’s three impoverished elementary schools.

Working at St. Isidore’s parish school, she filled in every position from principal to janitor, Father Bamba said, and quickly pulled the learning center into shape.

A special Mass to remember Sister Grace When: 4:30 p.m., June 29 Where: St. Anthony Church, Kalihi Presider: Father Aaron Bamba of Opifices Christi, pastor of St. Isidore Parish, Burgos, Pangasinan, Philippines To contribute: To give to Father Aaron Bamba and the continuing projects of Sister Grace Dorothy Lim, send checks payable to Maryknoll Sisters, c/o Sister Joan Chatfield MM, 2880 Oahu Ave., Honolulu, HI 96822.

Never one to be idle when she saw needs to be met, Sister Grace also established an educational foundation for the seminary of Father Bamba’s religious community, Opifices Christi (Workers of Christ). She also organized the village women and set up food programs for the elderly.

In one enterprise, characteristic of her inventiveness, Sister Grace procured loans to buy $25 piglets which she then gave to the women of the barangay, or village, to fatten up and sell three-and-a-half months later for 6,000 pesos, about $140. Father Bamba hopes to expand this program to 14 barangays, giving each woman four piglets at a time.

Sister Grace Dorothy was “like a hero,” Father Bamba said, and received a saint’s funeral with mourners filing in “day in and day out” for the full nine-day novena wake. She is buried on the grounds of the Opifices Christi seminary.