What's New
January 2009
A Commemorative Invitation
Blessed Marianne Cope Feastday
Friday, January 23, 2009 at 6:30 pm.
An Invitation: For much of the past year, work has been ongoing to create a reliquary that
would hold the remains of Blessed Marianne Cope. The reliquary* will be ready for the Feast
of Blessed Marianne. Our plan is to bless the reliquary and transfer Mother Marianne's remains
as a prelude to the Liturgy at St. Anthony Convent Chapel on Court Street in Syracuse, the
location of her Shrine and Museum, on January 23rd.
All are invited to attend this celebration
Rev. Msgr. Eugene Yennock will be celebrant and homilist.
At the Mass, the choir of the Sisters of Saint Francis will sing Blessed Marianne's favorite hymn,
O Makalapua, and the Blessed Marianne Hymn written by Patrick Downes, editor/musician of
the Hawaii Catholic Herald, diocesan newspaper in Honolulu.
Many of the relics collected from Blessed Marianne's grave at Kalaupapa, Molokai, will be on
display in the sanctuary after the Mass.
Blessed Marianne's Feastday date, January 23, the date of her birth, was announced officially
at her Beatification Mass at the Vatican on May 14, 2005.
______________________________________________________________________________
Blessed Marianne is featured "Saint of the Day"
On the American Catholic website
[potential canonized saints are featured on this particular site as
well as those who are canonized] Copy of article below:
Though leprosy scared off most people in 19th-century Hawaii, that disease sparked great
generosity in the woman who came to be known as Mother Marianne of Molokai. Her courage
helped tremendously to improve the lives of its victims in Hawaii, a territory annexed to the
United States during her lifetime (1898).
Mother Marianne’s generosity and courage were celebrated at her May 14, 2005, beatification
in Rome. She was a woman who spoke “the language of truth and love” to the world, said
Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. Cardinal Martins,
who presided at the beatification Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, called her life “a wonderful work
of divine grace.” Speaking of her special love for persons suffering from leprosy, he said,
“She saw in them the suffering face of Jesus. Like the Good Samaritan, she became their mother.”
On January 23, 1838, a daughter was born to Peter and Barbara Cope of Hessen-Darmstadt,
Germany. The girl was named after her mother. Two years later the Cope family immigrated
to the United States and settled in Utica, New York. Young Barbara worked in a factory until
August 1862, when she went to the Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Syracuse,
New York. After profession in November of the next year, she began teaching at Assumption
parish school.
Marianne held the post of superior in several places and was twice the novice mistress of her
congregation. A natural leader, three different times she was superior of St. Joseph’s Hospital
in Syracuse, where she learned much that would be useful during her years in Hawaii.
Elected provincial in 1877, Mother Marianne was unanimously re-elected in 1881. Two years later
the Hawaiian government was searching for someone to run the Kakaako Receiving Station for
people suspected of having leprosy. More than 50 religious communities in the United States and
Canada were asked. When the request was put to the Syracuse sisters, 35 of them volunteered
immediately. On October 22, 1883, Mother Marianne and six other sisters left for Hawaii where
they took charge of the Kakaako Receiving Station outside Honolulu; on the island of Maui they
also opened a hospital and a school for girls.
In 1888, Mother Marianne and two sisters went to Molokai to open a home for “unprotected
women and girls” there. The Hawaiian government was quite hesitant to send women for this
difficult assignment; they need not have worried about Mother Marianne! On Molokai she took
charge of the home that Blessed Damien DeVeuster (d. 1889) had established for men and boys.
Mother Marianne changed life on Molokai by introducing cleanliness, pride and fun to the colony.
Bright scarves and pretty dresses for the women were part of her approach.
Awarded the Royal Order of Kapiolani by the Hawaiian government and celebrated in a poem by
Robert Louis Stevenson, Mother Marianne continued her work faithfully. Her sisters have attracted
vocations among the Hawaiian people and still work on Molokai.
Mother Marianne died on August 9, 1918.
Comment:
The government authorities were reluctant to allow Mother Marianne to be a mother on Molokai.
Thirty years of dedication proved their fears unfounded. God grants gifts regardless of human
short-sightedness and allows those gifts to flower for the sake of the kingdom.
Quote:
has the opportunity come to a woman to devote every hour of 30 years to the mothering of
people isolated by law from the rest of the world. She risked her own life in all that time, faced
everything with unflinching courage and smiled sweetly through it all.”
This entry appears in the print edition of Day by Day With Followers of Francis and Clare.)
http://www.americancatholic.org/features/saintofDay/