Healing by Cope is more than a miracle

The Syracuse, N.Y., woman whose recovery from multiple organ failure in 1993 was verified as one of the miracles that will elevate Mother Marianne Cope to sainthood says she is elated that Cope will be canonized Oct. 21 in Rome.

In December 1992 Mahoney, then 14, was gravely ill in a Syracuse hospital with complications from her treatment for ovarian cancer. Doctors did not give her long to live.

The following month a nun from the Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse went to Mahoney’s hospital bed, touched her on the forehead with a relic — a piece of a bookmark that belonged to Cope, a Franciscan nun who cared for Hansen’s disease patients in Hawaii until her death in 1918 — and prayed for healing in Cope’s name.

Within a week Mahoney’s health improved. She left the hospital four months later. Her doctors could not explain her survival in medical terms.

Now 34, Mahoney is in good health and living in Syracuse. She has aspirations to be a writer and an actress but has been occupied helping her mother care for her father the past several years and won’t be attending Cope’s sainthood ceremony.

Pope John Paul II in December 2004 ordered a decree be issued authenticating a miracle in Mahoney’s case attributed to Cope’s intercession.

It was the first of two authenticated miracles needed for sainthood. The Vatican authenticated the second miracle in December 2011, in the case of Sharon Smith, an Oneida, N.Y., school custodian who recovered from pancreatitis and organ failure in 2006 after a packet of soil from Cope’s grave was pinned to her gown.

Mahoney said she has readily shared her story over the years because “I recognize that I represent hope for people,” but also said it’s not her intention to give people desperate for a miracle a magic formula, or try to get anyone to believe in miracles.

“Many people have asked me, ‘You don’t really believe this miracle hype, do you?’” she said. “I’m not defending it, I’m just accepting it, so I don’t feel like I have to debate it. And if my story changes minds and they all start believing in miracles, well of course that’s wonderful.

“But if all they walk out with is just the knowledge of Mother Marianne, then I’ve done my job. Because she was remarkable, and that’s really what this story is about. I’m a piece of the puzzle.”

The nun who touched Mahoney with Cope’s relic was Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, whose research spearheaded the campaign for Cope’s canonization. Convinced of the healing power of Cope’s spirit, Hanley on Jan. 3, 1993, visited Mahoney, whom doctors said was near death.

Hanley prayed for Mahoney and placed the relic of Cope on her forehead. Hanley and other St. Francis nuns had a prayer vigil for Mahoney. By mid-January, Mahoney’s organs slowly regained their function. She left the hospital in April, with doctors attributing her recovery to “unknown reasons,” according to saintmariannecope.com.

Mary Mahoney, Kate’s mother, said in an interview: “Sister Mary Laurence gave me great comfort, her presence. She asked if she could lay the relic on Kate’s head. I was very pleased and comforted by that, knowing that we were that close, if you will, to Mother Marianne. … I can’t say I was expecting a miracle; I just was comforted with a feeling of grace, of great peace.”

Kate Mahoney said her miraculous healing wasn’t like a bolt from the blue that some people might imagine.

“You must realize that this was not the case of me throwing (away) crutches and walking or (being) blind and then had sight,” she said. Her recovery was a slow process of regaining basic skills, like walking or holding a pen, one at a time, she said.

People who are open to the possibility of miracles “need to be willing to adjust and not focus so much on the endgame that you miss the time you have in the present,” Mahoney said.

“For example, my dad is dying of cancer. But rather than wait around for death or try and cheat it, my family and I live moment to moment. Moments create days. Before we know it, we are celebrating and living life, not fighting it.”