HAIKU — After 100 years, the simple and humble St. Rita Catholic Church still stands in the heart of the Haiku community.

Parishioners and church leaders gathered together on Saturday night and Sunday morning for a jubilee celebrating a century of faith, love, peace and gratitude. 

“Today is a special day, and I’ve been here many times and there’s always a great feeling of community here. People are proud to be here, they are dedicated to their parish and they are very hardworking,” said Bishop Larry Silva, who has been serving as bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu since 2005 and flew to Maui to lead Mass this weekend. “Even though today is a special day and we congratulate them, their daily commitment is certainly admirable as well.”

Silva, also the first priest born in Hawaii to become bishop of Honolulu, said Sunday afternoon that although St. Rita Church is “not ornate,” that’s not what’s most important.

“I think what makes this church special is perhaps its humility, its simplicity. It is a beautiful church in that way. I was very impressed today with the singing and everybody joining in,” he said. “So even though it’s a small church in a rural area, people are very committed to it.”

St. Rita Catholic Church was built in the 1920’s by Sacred Hearts Father Jules Verhaeghe in Haiku, which was a former sugar plantation district that eventually converted to pineapple in 1921, according to the church’s website.

Though Catholicism had been practiced on Maui for many years prior, the physical building for the faith was established in 1922 and later received parish status in 1950.

On Sunday, the church showed signs of age and weather in the church walls, flooring, and rafters, but the community continues to mend and support its structure year after year. 

“I think of my own grandfather who was born in this area,” Silva said. “The Catholic faith was definitely here, but now for the last 100 years, there’s this parish and of course, many people have gone through here. Many people have been married here, people have been buried from here, people have been baptized here; this is a place where people gather for their joys and their sorrows, all because here we encounter the risen Jesus and I hope that people understand that and come to experience it here as we celebrate him every Sunday.” 

With Haiku Marketplace just up the street on Haiku Road, Roots School across the street from the church, Haiku Elementary School just around the corner, and small neighborhoods scattered throughout, St. Rita Church is surrounded by a “special community.” 

Retired high school teacher Kathy Middleton has been attending St. Rita Church since 1986 when her family moved walking distance from the church, just across the street. Membership with the church continued with her children. 

“My daughter was an altar girl, one of the first girls that served on the altar, and my son made his first communion here and his confirmation,” Middleton said. “It’s really a special community because it’s such a variety of people from different ethnic groups and they all come together and it really feels like a really special place to be.” 

Whether members know one another or not, they are always welcoming to everyone, she added. 

“It always feels like coming home,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of different priests over the years, but the dedication and kindness and welcoming of the people in the parish is pretty constant.” 

After prayers, rejoicing, hymns, and communion, parishioners and their families gathered for lunch and entertainment.

Although service is usually held inside the church, the jubilee event was held outdoors in a large tent to accommodate the large attendance. St. Rita Church still remained open all day, allowing the community to enter the building to view photo albums, articles and posters displaying the parish’s history. 

“The beauty of our church has something to do with what the bishop talked about today, that it is a strength to remind us of the things that are enduring and really matter,” parishioner Carol Petith-Zbiciak said after mass on Sunday afternoon. “It is a strength in the times of adversity that we often all face, either individually or in the community.”

And fitting for the day’s theme, everyone sang a song together that Petith-Zbiciak wrote about the church’s 100th anniversary.

The inspiration for the “Jubilee Song” came after the Good Friday service. She mulled some ideas and consulted lyrics with the church’s musicians, she said. 

 “The song is meant for the people here. We, the people, are the church,” said Petith-Zbiciak, who joined St. Rita’s in 2008. “It’s not just the termite-eaten building, it is the people that make this a wonderful place. It has been a gift from God that we have been here for 100 years.”

* Dakota Grossman can be reached at dgrossman@mauinews.com.