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Photos: Darrell Grindstaff
Saint Benedict's Painted Church
In 1902, a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium arrived on the shores of the Big Island to spread the Christian faith among Hawaiian natives in the district of Kona. Father John Berchmans Velghe stayed in Hawaii only five years and never gained the fame of another Belgian priest—Saint Damien of the Molokai leper colony at Kalaupapa—but he did leave a masterpiece of folk art in a tiny church at Honaunau that is unique to the entire Pacific. (See Map 2, D-3)
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