Painted Church (St. Benedict's)

St. Benedict's Painted Church is a Catholic parish church at Hōnaunau in South Kona, overlooking Kealakekua Bay. Its first chapel stood on the shore near the place of refuge; when Father John Berchmans Velghe, a Sacred Hearts priest from Belgium, followed the local residents up the slope, they took the church apart and moved it uphill with mules. It was then consecrated and named for St. Benedict. Father Velghe, a self-taught artist, painted the interior himself with ordinary house paint on plain building wood, in a three-dimensional style inspired by the Gothic cathedral of Burgos in Spain. His scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints were teaching pictures for people who could not read, and some of the painted words are in Hawaiian. He had to return to Belgium before he finished, and some panels are still bare. The church is on the Hawaii State Register and the National Register of Historic Places, and it is still a working parish, with a Hawaiian Mass on the second Sunday of each month. Visitors are welcome: from the main highway, turn toward the ocean, watch for the Painted Church sign and follow winding Painted Church Road, and leave a donation in the box if you would like to help keep the church up.