The altar at St. Benedict's Church
Tucked into the slopes of Mauna Loa among coffee farms above Honaunau Bay, this church has been drawing the religious and the curious alike for more than a century. Peope from all over come to see these incredible murals that adorn the inside of the church walls, ceiling, and altar -- works of art so famous that the church is commonly called the Painted Church.
According to church records, the church did not start out high on the hill. Back in the 1840's, a smaller church built on the shoreline. Church records go back to 1872 so one can assume the church was in existence at that time The chapel on the shoreline was called St. Regis, probably because the priest there was named Regis.
Around the mid-1880s, many people had moved from the shoreline to the mountain side where the soil was more fertile. In 1899, Father John Berchmans Velghe became the pastor of the church and he moved the church uphill to its current day location.
The church was renamed St. Benedict Catholic Church back in 1902 for which their seems to be no explanation. Father Velghe , a self-taught artist, decided to set about painting murals inside the church that same year. He sketched Bible scenes on sheets of tracing paper and hung them in the church, tracing their outline and then painting them. His Murals include images of Cain and Abel, the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi, Christ rejecting the devil, and others How he painted these scenes from memory is just amazing. He painted them with regular house paint and the murals have never been retouched since he painted them.
For two years Father Velghe painted the interior of the church. By 1904 he had not quite finished all the murals when he was transferred to another parish and subsequent health issues forced him to return to his native Belgium. In the meantime, word began to quickly spread around the islalnd about the stunning frescoes and shortly thereafter the church became known as the "Painted Church."
Comments