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The Honolulu Advertiser

Updated at 12:57 p.m., Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Jodo Mission elects 1st non-Japanese bishop

Advertiser Staff

 

Wajira Wansa

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On Sept. 22, the Hawaii Council of Jodo Missions elected the Rev. Wajira Wansa, the first non-Japanese bishop in the state, as its new bishop.

Wansa of Kurtistown and Hakalau Jodo Mission was chosen during the 36th Hawaii Council of Jodo Mission's Convention.

Outgoing Bishop Ryokan Nakamura will remain at Honolulu Betsuin as a researcher for the Jodo Missions of Hawaii Research Center.

Wansa was born in Sri Lanka in 1950 and became a novice Buddhist monk at age 13. His wife, Aruni, recently graduated from the college of business at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo; son Evan is in seventh grade.

Wansa went to Japan and lived at Amidaji Temple in Kobe, where he studied the chants and scriptures of Jodo-shu Buddhism from the Rev. Shunjo Tosa. He graduated from Bukkyo University in Kyoto. After being ordained a Jodo-shu Buddhist priest at the Chion-in Temple, the headquarter temple of Jodo-shu in Japan, he came to Hawai'i as a minister at Jodo Mission of Hawaii in 1978.

In 1979, he was assigned to Kurtistown Jodo Mission and has also been serving as minister for Hakalau Jodo Mission since 2000.