Bishop Steven John Maekawa, O.P.

 

 

 

 

 

We lost  a missionary but we gained a bishop! In July 2023, Pope Francis named one of our own, Fr. Steven Maekawa, O.P., Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska. He was ordained and installed in October 2023 and we are proud and delighted.

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Bishop Maekawa is a fourth generation Japanese-American and a cradle Catholic, born in 1967. He met the Dominicans while studying architecture at the University of Washington and entered the Order after graduation in 1990. In 1998 he received his Master of Divinity degree from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California and also was ordained to the priesthood, serving first as chaplain of the Newman Center at the University of Washington (1998–2002).  He then ministered as a military chaplain with the Marines and Navy, and in 2004 he deployed to Afghanistan, earning a special medal for active duty. Later he served as vocations director of the Western Dominican Province from 2007 to 2015 and then as pastor of Holy Family Old Cathedral Parish in Anchorage, Alaska from 2016 to 2023.

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While at Holy Family, then Fr. Maekawa began an ambitious outreach program within the parish to serve, on a rotating basis, the poor and isolated Catholic Yupik and Inuit communities who have long been without resident priestly ministry. Being physically isolated from the outside world except for an airfield or a boat landing, these outlying native communities have most sorely felt the shortage of vocations. Today, largely through our support of his program, our resident and visiting friars now make over 65 annual mission trips, traveling long distances over difficult terrain and harsh weather conditions, to 20 different isolated communities within the parish.

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Now, as Bishop of the Diocese of Fairbanks--the largest U.S. diocese in area and the northernmost, with 46 Catholic parishes, only nine of which can be reached by car--he will need to use a bush plane to reach and introduce himself to all the remote parishes. Many of them are only able to have Mass and receive sacraments every several months, but Bishop Maekawa has had experience in helping to rectify that! May God be with you in the bush planes and in all your new duties, Your Excellency.