An inspiration in a troubled world

Pope Benedict yesterday signed decrees elevating seven people already celebrated in the chronicles of the Roman Catholic faith to sainthood, including Blessed Marianne Cope of Molokai, the Franciscan nun whose years of sacrifice eased the pain of many Hansen’s disease patients compelled to live out their lives on the island’s remote Kalaupapa settlement.

The pope officially approved the second of two miracles — both related to the healing of dying patients — as being the result of Marianne Cope’s intercession. That ultimately will lead to canonizing the accomplished hospital administrator and colleague to St. Damien in the care of people suffering from leprosy, making her Hawaii’s second Catholic saint.

Sainthood is a status that may not move many people outside the Catholic community, but Blessed Marianne’s story surely serves as a source of inspiration for a world burdened by anxiety and conflict, regardless of religious affiliation.

In 1838 she was born in Germany as Maria Anna Barbara Koob. A few months later the family moved to the U.S., settling in Syracuse, N.Y.; the family name was anglicized as Cope. Her work with the Franciscan order led her to help with the founding of two Catholic hospitals in central New York, eventually becoming administrator of one that partnered with a medical school, advancing health care for the area.

Hawaii ultimately was the beneficiary of her pioneering spirit and administrative skill. Although she had attained the post as superior general in her religious community, she accompanied six sisters on a mission to what were known as the Sandwich Islands, where the primary medical challenge was the ministry to Hansen’s disease patients.

"I am not afraid of any disease," she said. In fact, unlike Damien, she never contracted the illness herself.

But she undeniably gave her life to its treatment, first helping to establish hospital nursing at various institutions, interceding against the abuse of leprosy patients by government-appointed officials. For a time the policy of alienating the patients to Molokai was lifted, but when it was reestablished in 1888, she went into lifelong exile herself with the patients to work with the then-ailing Belgian priest. Under her leadership, before and after Damien’s death, Mother Marianne was able to vastly improve the Kalawao peninsula’s treatment facilities.

The residents of Kalaupapa — indeed, many people throughout the Islands — needed no formal recognition to appreciate the hands-on labors of love by the superior and her nuns, a luminous demonstration of their religious devotion. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of the women, "He marks the sisters on the painful shores, and even a fool is silent and adores." Upon her death in 1918, her beloved patients took up the care of her grave, a traditional Hawaiian demonstration of reverence.

The formal recognition by Rome, to be finalized upon the still-to-be-scheduled canonization, is cause for celebration. Elevating Marianne Cope’s service and sacrifice to those cast off by an unsympathetic society should be seen as a bright example for humanity. Her work reflects the ideal of charity, fulfilled in its greatest measure.