Fr. Steven Maekawa, O.P.

 

 

 

Fr. Steven Maekawa, O.P. is a fourth generation Japanese-American and a cradle Catholic. He met the Dominicans while studying architecture at the University of Washington and entered the Order after graduation in 1990. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1998 and has served in pastoral ministries at St. Dominic’s Parish in San Francisco and at the University of Washington in Seattle. He also served as a reserve military chaplain with the Marines and Navy and in 2004, he deployed to Afghanistan with the Army. Back home, he served as the Vocations Director for the Western Dominican Province. Currently he is pastor of Holy Family Old Cathedral Parish in Anchorage, Alaska and has begun an ambitious outreach program within our province to serve, on a rotating basis, the 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 Fr. Steve’s program, our friars now make over 65 annual mission trips to 20 different isolated communities without priests.