According to Marlene R. De Costa, diocesan director of real estate, the church and its contents were insured for $300,000.
Mixed blessings
Things could have been worse.
The fire gutted the church, but left its walls and steeple standing. Untouched were the rectory and the carport modified for children’s religious education classes, each standing a few feet from the church.
Father Guerreiro called the fire “surgical” in nature.
The flames even spared the sacristy, a room attached to the back of the church that stores the materials needed to celebrate Mass.
“It’s amazing how the sacristy is intact,” Father Guerreiro said on Feb. 12. “The liturgical books, holy oils are intact, the vestments are intact.”
Also unaffected was the building next door, the former Stanley’s coffee shop, which the parish bought recently for a possible gift shop and museum. It is now called the Damien Center.
Brito said the fire could have been disastrous for Kaunakakai.
Most of the buildings on the town’s main street are older wooden structures, she said, and everything could have gone up in flames. But there was no wind that night, she said, and the firefighters got there in time.
Molokai’s main church
(Story continues below)
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
St. Sophia Church is the main church of the St. Damien Parish, which encompasses all of topside Molokai. The parish has three other churches — St. Vincent Ferrer in Maunaloa on the west side, and on the east side, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in Kaluaaha and St. Joseph in Kamalo. Masses are no longer celebrated in the tiny Kamalo church.
The parish has about 300 families. Four out of five Molokai parishioners went to Mass at St. Sophia. The 1,852-square-foot church held about 120 people, according to Father Guerreiro, but about 265 showed up on any given weekend, divided between two Masses. The overflow stood outside.
The church was not yet cool before the pastor received three offers from other places to use their facilities. At an emergency meeting of the pastoral council the evening after the fire, it was decided to use the Molokai Oceanside Health and Wellness Center (the former Pau Hana Inn).
Meanwhile, the rectory, which contains the parish offices but is not a residence, was still roped off by the fire inspectors and out of bounds.
“I am working out of my home and my truck,” said Father Guerreiro, who has some experience with destroyed churches as the vicar of Kauai following Hurricane Iniki in 1992. “Weekday liturgies will be at the Damien Center.”
The parish was planning to raze St. Sophia later this year to make way for the building of a new $3 million church and parish center. The parish has so far raised $1.4 million for the new structure which has been in the planning for more than a decade.