Vatican medical board approves 2nd Blessed Marianne miracle

(Article from Hawaii Catholic Herald online - Click here for link.)

The ruling, a significant step toward canonization, will be followed by an examination by Vatican theologians

By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Blessed Marianne Cope of Molokai made a significant step toward sainthood this month when a Vatican medical board ruled in favor of a “miracle” attributed to her intercession.

According to a news release from Blessed Marianne’s religious community, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities in Syracuse, N.Y., the seven physicians at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared on June 16 that there is no medical

explanation for the cure of a woman who had been suffering from an allegedly irreversible fatal condition.

The board concluded the woman’s healing was inexplicable according to available medical knowledge. The doctors on the case expected her to die and were amazed scientifically at her survival,” the release said.

No other details about the case have been released.

The Sisters of St. Francis received the news from Msgr. Robert J. Sarno, an American priest at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints who has been working with the postulator of Blessed Marianne’s cause, Father Ernesto Piacentini, in the written presentation of the miracle case at the Vatican.

The miracle still must pass two more Vatican examinations before it is presented to the pope for final approval for canonization. The first is by a board of theologians who will determine if the healing was the result of prayer for blessed Marianne’s intercession, and then by a committee of cardinals and bishops who will examine the entire case and give a final verdict.

Sister Patricia Burkard, general minister of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, said that the medical board’s decision is a “reason to rejoice” for her religious order, for Blessed Marianne’s devotees, and for “all who unselfishly care for others and do acts of charity known only to God.”

“Mother Marianne was the human face of the Gospel’s mandate to care for the hungry, the sick and the impoverished,” Sister Patricia said. “We pray for success in the case so that her inspirational life will be better known throughout the world. She is a model for us all.”

Sister Francis Regis Hadano, regional administrator for the Sisters of St. Francis in Hawaii, said her community is “delighted” with the Vatican ruling.

“We Franciscan Sisters are very pleased and certainly excited about the advancement in the miracle case,” she told the Hawaii Catholic Herald by e-mail. “We are hopeful the theologians will meet sometime later this year. There is much work to be done in preparation for this session so prayer is needed.”

“We thank all who pray specially for Blessed Marianne to be canonized,” she said.

This is the second miracle attributed to Blessed Marianne’s intercession to go through the Vatican approval process.

The first miracle, required for her beatification, was the medically unexplainable recovery of a New York girl dying from multiple organ failure after prayers were said to Mother Marianne. It was approved by the medical board on Jan. 29, 2004. The board of theologians gave its approval six months later on July 15.

Six months after that, on Dec. 20, Pope John Paul II affirmed the case, making Mother Marianne eligible for beatification. She was beatified in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on May 14, 2005.

Mother Marianne, as the head of her religious community in Syracuse, led the first group of Franciscan Sisters to the Hawaiian Islands in 1883 to establish a system of nursing care for leprosy patients. She was the only one of 50 religious superiors in the United States, Canada and Europe who were asked for help to accept the challenge.

Once in Hawaii, she relinquished her leadership position in Syracuse to lead her mission for 35 years, five in Honolulu and the remainder on Molokai.

When she died in Kalaupapa in 1918, a Honolulu newspaper wrote: “Seldom 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.”

Posted on Friday, June 24, 2011 (Archive on Saturday, July 09, 2011)
Posted by pdownes  Contributed by pdownes

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As the sun set on May 13, at the end of a jubilant liturgy, Bishop Larry Silva placed a relic of Blessed Marianne Cope in a seven-foot tall koa and glass case in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.

It was May 14 in Rome, the sixth anniversary of the beatification of the Franciscan nun who succeeded St. Damien as Kalaupapa’s spiritual guiding force.

The permanent enshrinement of the relic, tiny fragments of Blessed Marianne’s bones sifted from her Kalaupapa gravesite six years ago (see photo on right), came at the end of a neighbor island tour. From May 6 to May 12, the relic had been displayed for veneration in seven churches on five islands.

The cathedral Mass began with a Hawaiian chanter entering the church’s double doors intoning an oli or Hawaiian prayer, followed by a procession of nine altar servers, two deacons, eight priests and Bishop Silva wearing gold vestments and a tall golden miter.

A second procession brought in the relic, carried by Sister Patricia Burkard, general minister of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities. That procession was introduced by another chanter singing “e komo mai,” Hawaiian for “welcome,” leading 25 Sisters of St. Francis into the church two-by-two, including Molokai-born Sister Marion Kikukawa, who was recently disabled by a stroke, in a wheelchair.

Adding pageantry were eight kahili bearers, carrying the Hawaiian standards made especially for the occasion — four tall processional ones and four smaller handheld ones — of yellow, black and red feathers.

About 400 people filled the cathedral for the historic event, including the great-great-grand niece and nephew of Blessed Marianne Cope, Margaret Burnett and Paul DeMare, several patients from Kalaupapa, diocesan seminarians, deacons and deacon candidates, members of Hawaiian royal orders and members of local religious orders.

Large sprays of red ginger decorated the sanctuary. White Easter cloth streamers draped the length of the church’s interior columns.

In his welcoming remarks, Bishop Silva observed that when Mother Marianne first stepped into the cathedral in 1883 after her long ocean voyage from North America, it would have been inconceivable to her that 128 years later “we would be here in this cathedral welcoming back her relic.”

The pieces of bone, collected after the exhumation of Mother Marianne’s body in 2005, four months before her beatification in Rome, were displayed in a simple gold reliquary about six inches tall, behind a small glass window in a circular casing mounted on a stand.

During Mass, it stood among flowers on the small table in front of the altar.

Midwife of mercy

In his homily, noting the liturgy’s first Scripture reading about the conversion of Saul, Bishop Silva compared Blessed Marianne to Ananias, the holy man God sent to restore Saul’s sight after he was struck down and blinded on the way to Damascus.

When Hawaiians of Mother Marianne’s time were blindsided with the medical verdict of leprosy and sentenced to lifetime banishment in Kalaupapa, God sent a holy woman, a “special messenger,” to “remove the scales of resentment and despair” from their lives, the bishop said.

“She was a midwife of mercy,” he said, whose “strength came from the body and blood of Jesus himself.

“Today we bring in her bone fragments,” Bishop Silva said, “with heavenly assurance that she is forever alive and that Jesus has touched her soul forever.”

“She is in God’s presence now continuing to intercede for her brothers and sisters,” he said, not only in cases of sickness and disease, but for those struck down by the foreclosures of their homes and the loss of their jobs.

The bishop urged the congregation to follow Blessed Marianne’s example, and to allow some of her “mana,” or spiritual power, to “rub off on us” so that “we may hunger for the work of changing lives with God’s incredible love.”