King Street Cemetery: A resting place for the isles’ first missionaries

The Catholic Church in Hawaii will celebrate a memorial Mass at the King Street Catholic Cemetery in Honolulu on Nov. 2, All Souls’ Day. Located at the corner of King Street and Ward Avenue, the cemetery holds the remains of four early bishops and dozens of priests, brothers, and sisters from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

The cemetery site developed in the 1840s following the Edict of Toleration of 1839. The Kingdom of Hawaii provided the first lot to Sacred Hearts missionaries, with records suggesting Chiefess Lydia Kamake‘e Pi‘ikoi may have granted the land around 1845. Other parcels were acquired through purchases from Manuel Paiko in 1866 and W.C. Achi in 1912. Father Valentin Franckx of the Sacred Hearts helped develop the site into a formal cemetery during the late 19th century.

The memorial service comes as the Church prepares to mark the bicentennial of Catholicism in Hawaii, spanning from 1827 to 2027. The cemetery serves as a burial site for the early missionaries alongside the Hawaiian, Portuguese, and immigrant families they served.