As an online businesswoman, Pam Aqui is accustomed to dealing with long-distance clients.
But even she was surprised by a call in early March. It came from Washington, D.C., but in a way it reached even farther, to the Vatican.
"I got a call from the U.S. government, and they wanted me to make a koa rosary for the pope," said Aqui, 70. "He hadn’t been elected yet."
Aqui makes rosaries, the strings of beads used by Catholics to mark the sequence of prayers that recount and hail the story of Jesus Christ. The rosary is considered one of the most sacred prayers in Catholicism, and rosaries, with a crucifix and beads, are popular gifts among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
The White House wanted Aqui, who’s been making rosaries for 20 years, to create one as a gift for the new pope. A few days later, Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church, taking the name Francis, succeeding the retiring Pope Benedict XVI.
"I was just amazed, amazed, amazed," Aqui said, recalling the moment she got the call. "It just struck me like, ‘What?’ At first I thought I’d done something wrong.
"I felt like somebody picked up a grain of sand and said, ‘You,’ because there are thousands of rosary makers."
Indeed, there is enough coincidence in her story to suggest divine intervention. A native of Delaware who moved to Hawaii 32 years ago, she attended the University of Delaware at the same time as Vice President Joe Biden. Biden represented the Obama administration at Pope Francis’ inaugural Mass and presented him with her rosary, kept in a beautiful koa box made by fellow Kailua resident Matt Medeiros.
While President Barack Obama’s roots in Hawaii likely played a role in drawing White House attention to her, Aqui is probably one of the most well-known rosary makers in the country. She was one of the first to advertise on the Internet, 20 years ago, and has been written up on the website how-to-pray-the-rosary-everyday.com and cited on livingrosaries.org, the latter describing her website, heirloomrosaries. com, as "stunningly beautiful pages showcasing hand-made and custom-made rosaries."
Aqui started making the elegant strings after she and her husband Michael decided to pray the rosary together every day.
"He trotted out his plastic First Communion rosary, and I thought, ‘No!’" she said with a laugh. "I thought it should be beautiful, and so I decided to make him a rosary. … And then my daughter (Jennifer Pochinski) found out we were starting to pray the rosary every day, and she knew I didn’t even have one, because I’m a convert, and she decided to make me one.
"We surprised each other on Christmas Day. I gave my husband his and she gave me mine, and I thought, ‘This is fun, I’m going to do it.’"
She started out by giving them away but then went into business. For years she was one of the only rosary makers on the Internet, offering her works at affordable prices until competitors started charging more, as if to question the quality of hers. Now her website lists rosaries with beads of amethyst, jade and fluorite selling for $750, Hawaiian koa rosaries priced at $70 and rosaries made of olive wood from Bethlehem for $40.
She’s lost track of how many she’s produced and can’t remember making one for anyone else famous, much less for a president to give to a pope.
"I love making rosaries," she said. "It’s calming and relaxing."
Seated in her comfortable living room, which has a corner dedicated to religious art and artifacts, the slight woman seemed to be in a meditative state during a reporter’s visit as she linked some beads together with silver wire.
AFTER THE initial call from the White House, it took about a week for Aqui to get the official green light to make the rosary. The White House requested koa beads and selected a crucifix and a centerpiece from her website.
Aqui typically has all of these materials on hand, as well as silver wire to string them together, but she went to extra lengths for this gift in consideration of its eventual recipient.
Most rosaries made with string eventually wear out as the users run their fingers along the beads to keep track of the prayers. Aqui said she usually tries "to make my rosaries with good, strong, sturdy wire, but for the pope I wanted it to be even thicker and stronger."
"I had to go to the local store and buy the wire. … And then I had an inspiration in the middle of the night and got up and redid it."
She had some pieces sent via express delivery to Hawaii to finish the rosary, which features small silver balls and strong bow ties to set off the "mystery" beads that signify important episodes in the life of Christ. It took Aqui about three days to make the rosary, including time spent waiting for materials to arrive, though actual assembly took just a few hours and included a prayer for the recipient.
"I didn’t even have time to watch anything of Pope Francis (on television) because I was so busy," she said. "If I’d had time, I would have done better. It would have been amazing, but I did the best I could."
For a proper rosary box, she found a kindred spirit in Medeiros, who lives a few blocks away. She had met him just a month earlier after noticing a koa jewelry box he’d made for a Knights of Columbus fundraiser.
Medeiros makes wood furnishings in his spare time, marketing them through a business with his wife called Matt and Rose Woodworking.
Like Aqui, he enjoyed it so much that when he started selling his products at craft shows, he priced them so low that people didn’t believe in the quality of his craftsmanship.
"My friends told me, ‘Matt, you got to raise your prices. That way people will believe how good they are,’" he said.
Medeiros learned woodworking from his stepfather, and it was from his stash of lumber that he found a beautiful plank of curly koa.
"It’s not necessarily the most perfect box I’ve ever made, it was such a rush job," said Medeiros, 41, who worships at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Kailua. "But the good thing with nature is, you’ll never have another piece of wood that looks exactly like that."
The box features a modified Celtic cross carved on the top. Medeiros used a computerized routing tool to create the design but was worried the wood might crack or chip during the process. "You never know how it will turn out until it’s done," he said.
Though he had enough wood for a couple of tries, the carving came out perfectly the first time. And with the grain drawn out by oil and lacquer —and a lot of elbow grease — the finish is so colorful it looks like "leaping flames," Medeiros said.
Medeiros’ full-time job is as a diesel mechanic for TheBus, giving him a wonderfully cosmic connection with Pope Francis.
"The cool thing is that this pope is such a humble guy, he rides public transportation," he said. "My friends at the Knights of Columbus were like, ‘It’s too bad you didn’t put something about your work on the city buses here,’ but of course we didn’t know who he was going to be at the time."
IN ADDITION to making rosaries, Aqui works as a counselor for adult converts at St. John Vianney Parish in Kailua. She said she has a good impression of the new pope, the first from Latin America and the first Jesuit.
"It sounds like he’s a regular guy who knows who he is," she said. "I think he’s well on his way to being a very good and holy pope."
Aqui and Medeiros have been told that the gifts were received by Pope Francis, but they don’t know anything beyond that. (Efforts by the Star-Advertiser to contact the Vatican and the White House about the Hawaii-made gifts were not successful.)
Medeiros, however, kids Aqui that Obama might stop by during his annual Christmas vacation here to pay his respects and let them know.
"I know the Lord was in the making of it," she said of the rosary and box. "I know that it’s by his plan and design; I just don’t know what for. Someday I’ll know. I just wanted to do the right thing."
