The newly ordained bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu is scheduled to visit Maui to attend a commemorative mass at the Sacred Hearts Mission Church as the community marks three years since wildfires devastated Lahaina.
Bishop Michael Thomas Tupou Castori was appointed in early May and was officially ordained on July 28. He has since been travelling across the state to visit various parishes.
Part of his tour included a visit to Kalaupapa, the Hansen’s disease settlement, which has been making recent efforts to continue sharing its stories for the future.
HPR spoke with Bishop Castori to learn more about his connection to, and journeys across, the Pacific.
Interview Highlights
On his connection to the Pacific
BISHOP MICHAEL THOMAS TUPOU CASTORI: It started over forty years ago in 1985. I was out of college and discerning my vocation … and there was a position available for teaching at a minor seminary on Guam, and so I thought that would be a great way to discern my own vocation, so I signed up. … And really from the time I landed, you know, within a day or two, I'd never been in the in the Pacific before, and I just, I felt at home, and there was something in the way that the people interacted and welcomed us, and it started really a lifelong relationship with Oceania. And so I worked those two years in Guam, which I loved, and then I made a retreat up on Saipan … I was teaching and teaching philosophy, and living and interacting with seminarians and clergy and sisters who were from all over, and I got to experience both the distinctions between the people of different island nations, and also the commonalities and how relational life is in the Pacific. And I, from that time on, really knew that I would be coming back to the Pacific ultimately.
… We were encouraged during our holidays, summer holidays, particularly Christmas holidays, to visit the different island nations, and one of those visits, I went to Tonga, and one of the seminarians brought me to his home. And I won't go into the whole story, but the parents really adopted me as part of the family. And it was, I realized very quickly, that it wasn't merely something gracious they were saying, but something that they really meant. And I was then part of their family, the Tupou family in Fasi-moe-Afi in Tonga, which was wonderful. I come from a very loving family in Sacramento, so I already had a deep experience of the graces of family life, and now I was experiencing it in a different part of the world.
On his visit to Kalaupapa
CASTORI: It was overwhelming. I mean, first of all, you land and there's a quiet and a beauty that is there. You know that we originally landed up topside, and then we got a flight over to Kalaupapa, and it's overwhelming because it's a place of great sanctity and holiness. The lives of Saint Damien and Saint Marianne Cope and others who gave them their lives for that ministry. But also it's overwhelming because there's, I felt there was a poignancy there in driving out and just seeing the cemeteries, you know, and seeing all all the graves and realizing that people must have felt deeply the experience suffered from isolation from family and from others. And that's kind of the greatest pain in life, is that kind of separation.
… I know that as a diocese, we're very committed to anything that we can do by way of affirming and protecting just the holiness of the place and of the ability of people, you know, to pray and to continue on in that tradition of the saints and of the holiness that is there, in a way that respects the place and does not overrun it in any way.
On his ordination as the bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu
CASTORI: You know, the appointment itself, the position is very new, of course, for me. But I did feel that from the time I came in May when the announcement was made, that it was, that I did feel at home. And as I mentioned, there's something common and something unique about each part of the Pacific, and I just, I am feeling the miracle of Hawaiʻi — that the people of this state, of this diocese, are drawn from all over, and at the same time, becoming Hawaiian and being imbued with the graces, as I mentioned at a installation mass, the graces of aloha, the graces of community of ʻohana, of welcoming even in our diversity. Somehow, there is a unity in a diversity that is really, I think, something just very pleasing to God.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 6, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
