A boy at Saint Francis School — an all-girls school until it went coed six years ago — says he is excited about his role in a school skit now in rehearsal.

He is playing Mother Marianne Cope, complete with habit.

During a rehearsal this week, ninth-grader Brandon Enos said no one came forward to play Cope, so he stepped up.

"I was serious when I volunteered," he said, "but I don’t talk like a girl."

No one tittered or made fun of him, said Sister Barbara Jean Wajda, who is in charge of grade-level activities geared around Cope’s canonization on Oct. 21 in Rome. Wajda wanted to be sure students from kindergarten through grade 12 knew all about the nun who dedicated 35 years of her life to helping victims of Hansen’s disease, most of them in Kalaupapa, Molokai, until her death in 1918.

The skit will be recorded for internal school use.

Sister Joan of Arc Souza, Saint Francis principal, laughed when asked whether a boy playing Cope was evidence of the equality of the sexes at a school that had been girls-only for 85 years. The school was dedicated to Cope’s memory when it was moved to its Manoa location in 1931.

"I think Mother Marianne would have had a good chuckle over that," Souza said. "We tell the boys, as we tell the girls, the perfect graduate of Saint Francis is someone who walks in her footsteps, reaching out to the outcasts and the underprivileged, and a guy can do that just as well as a woman. This is a perfect example that it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. … If you can do what she did, go for it!"

Ninth-graders were assigned skits, and each grade level was given a different project, such as coloring pages, creating PowerPoint stories and writing essays, Wajda said.

As she pinned the nun’s veil on Brandon, Wajda asked him to sit in a more lady­like way. "Mother Marianne would probably sit without her legs sprawled out, but that’s the man in you," she said. Once he was completely dressed, a girl said, "Oh, you look like Mother Marianne," and another suppressed a giggle.

Brandon said that the first time he put on the nun’s habit he realized how hot it was for the sisters to "sweat all day, which was part of the sacrifice, while they did their work." Habits were made of wool in Cope’s day.

Brandon partnered with Camille Danao in a skit about how Cope emphasized the importance of good hygiene in limiting the spread of leprosy and other infections. Brandon said he was impressed that Cope promised the several nuns who accompanied her that they would never get leprosy — and they didn’t, which was a miracle in itself, Brandon said.

He said Cope means a lot to him because "she sacrificed to save other people’s lives, and tried to make the rest of their lives happy and joyous. … Their motivation was to please God, and even if there was just a slim chance to save lives, they would take that 1 percent chance instead of just giving up."

Working on another skit, Kyle Savanello and Tristan Fabro said it was admirable that Cope wasn’t afraid to jeopardize her health to be among patients, whom society had shunned. They said they were amazed Cope and her staff would go to the Kalaupapa leprosy settlement, and admitted they wouldn’t have had the courage to go.

Tristan said, "I was surprised (Cope went to Molokai). It was very saintlike. I mean, who would go to an island where there are only lepers and not fear this serious disease … and try her hardest to help these people who are suffering and make it better for these people?

"I don’t think I have enough faith to do that. I’d still fear the disease, like (even) now, it’s too scary. It’s amazing how people can be so loving to some people, but it’s just too hard to handle."

Leilani Gamboa and Brenna Toy, partners in another skit, said Cope and her nuns had to deal initially with horrific conditions of filth, unbearable sights and odors, festering sores and human degradation. Leilani said she would have gone to Molokai under those circumstances because "I love God and would do what he wants us to do. God would protect me from any harm that would come to me."

"She must have loved them (the patients) because she saw the Christ in them."