Condition of Honolulu Catholic Cemetery is a sad disgrace

After leaving an air-conditioned building along South King Street recently, I walked slowly toward my parked car with an hour left on the parking meter — drinking in the warmth of the sun and feeling grand. Like a kid with wanderlust, I pushed past the scarcely opened gate into the old Honolulu Catholic Cemetery, also known as the King Street Catholic Cemetery. The condition was appalling!

It is with utmost embarrassment that I write about the Roman Catholic Church Cemetery at 839-A South King St. First let me say I was christened in the church in June 1939, began nursery school with the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, spent years in the convent "Holy Providence," married in the church, and left the church. So while I’m not a practicing Catholic, there is a part of me that will always be there.

In the cemetery, the grass is overgrown, with high weeds. Some of the headstones have no graves. The roots of the "Queen Tree" cradle some of the headstones. Broken pillars lay next to graves; it is obvious the contractors or tree trimmers left them broken and discarded. Several grave markers are sequestered at the corner of what appears to have been a chapel and tree roots from a ficus have obscured the original plots.

Interred beneath the broken concrete are four Catholic bishops. Msgr. Herman Koeckemann erected the tall iron cross in the center of the cemetery. He was eventually laid to rest under the cross. Several other bishops of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, (Msgri. Gulstan Ropert, Libert H. Boeynaems and Stephen Alencastre) were also buried there, next to Msgr. Koeckemann.

Remains of some 40 of the early members of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts also lay buried since 1853 in a common grave on site. Other notable people buried in this cemetery include the Native Hawaiian patriot and former delegate to the U.S. Congress, Robert William Wilcox (his great grandson, Kelly, lovingly attends his grave); and Princess Eugenie Ninito Sumner of Tahiti, wife of High Chief John Keolaloa Sumner and friend of Queen Liliuokalani as well as of Honolulu’s first mayor, Joseph Fern. There are gravesites of people who arrived in Hawaii on the Earl Dalhousie in March 1882, the ship that bought the statue of Kamehameha to Honolulu.

The cemetery is maintained by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu and has been the final resting place for many Roman Catholics from Honolulu after the 1839 Edict of Toleration.

Part of the cemetery is on land donated by King Kamehameha III.

Given the history interred at this cemetery, how can it be lost to the ages?

It is not on the state Register of Historic Sites, but it should be.

In all of the years of Catholic education I was taught reverence for the departed and veneration for their souls. Walking through this cemetery, I could see those words had no meaning to those who should be its keepers.

Is the Catholic Church so busy it cannot take care of these hallowed grounds?