By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Mother Marianne Cope was the head of her Franciscan community and a bright light in the field of hospital administration in Syracuse, N.Y., 120 years ago when she responded to the letter of a Polynesian king pleading for someone to care for hundreds of his people who had fallen victim to a dreaded fatal disfiguring disease.

The monarch was King Kalakaua. The disease was leprosy, later to be called Hansen’s disease.

In 1883, at age 45, Mother Marianne left New York with six other sisters for Hawaii. She dedicated the rest of her life to the islands’ sick and dying. She never returned to Syracuse.

Her life of heroic sacrifice and selflessness has made her a candidate for sainthood.

Mother Marianne’s cause for canonization took a major step forward on Oct. 24 when nine theologians of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints unanimously recommended that she receive the title “venerable,” the first of three formal church designations on the road to sainthood.

The second step is beatification. The third is canonization itself.

According to Franciscan Sister of Syracuse Mary Laurence Hanley, the Franciscan community’s director of the cause, the next step is for the congregation’s 12-member commission of cardinals and bishops to approve the theologians’ recommendation.

If the commission does so, which Sister Mary Laurence said is likely given the theologians’ unanimous vote, the pope will sign the decree giving Mother Marianne the title of “venerable.”

Sister Mary Laurence said that Father Peter Gumpel, the Vatican relator or examiner of Mother Marianne’s cause, told her that the commission would probably make its decision in 2004.

Being named venerable means that Mother Marianne’s beatification process can go forward. Among the requirements for beatification is one miracle attributed to the candidate’s intercession.

According to Sister Mary Laurence, the case of a physical healing of a young woman has already been documented and submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints as the miracle required.

As soon as the pope declares Mother Marianne venerable, the congregation’s medical and theological boards can proceed with the formal investigation of the alleged miracle.

After beatification, a second miracle is needed for canonization.

The Franciscan Sisters’ general minister, Sister Grace Anne Dillenschneider, said her order is “delighted and uplifted” by the theologians’ approval. “We need her inspirational life to be better known,” she said.

Sister Mary Laurence said that she is “especially pleased” that the vote was unanimous.

“And why shouldn’t it be,” she said. “There is nothing in any of the records that was contrary to her cause.”

She said that Mother Marianne’s case had been in the top tier of the church’s more than 2,000 canonization causes when it was put on last month’s schedule for a vote. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints reviews about 30 cases a year.

Helping, she said, was the “support and interest of the bishops of both the dioceses of Honolulu and Syracuse.”

Sister Mary Laurence said that Mother Marianne was an extraordinary model of “sacrifice and selflessness.”

“Her humility and her cheerful acceptance” of a life of quiet service are much needed lessons for today’s world, she said, and appropriate reasons to elevate her example through sainthood.

Mother Marianne was born Barbara Koob in the German grand duchy of Hesse Darmstadt and moved at age two with her family to Utica, N.Y.

She joined the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse at age 24, taking the religious name Marianne. She became a nurse-administrator and helped establish two of the first hospitals in central New York. She was elected provincial superior in 1877.

In response to King Kalakaua’s request, she and her contingent of six Franciscan Sisters arrived in Hawaii on Nov. 8, 1883. Within a few years, she had taken charge of BranchHospital for leprosy patients in Honolulu and Kapiolani Home in Honolulu for the daughters of leprosy patients, and had established MalulaniHospital, Maui’s first general hospital.

On Nov. 14, 1888, five months before the death of Father Damien in Kalaupapa, she arrived there to care for the women patients at the settlement’s Charles R. Bishop Home and the Boy’s Home in Kalawao.

After Father Damien’s death, Mother Marianne became the settlement’s guiding force, considering it her duty to, in her words, “make life as pleasant and as comfortable as possible for those of our fellow creatures whom God has chosen to afflict with this terrible disease.”

A professional health practitioner who knew the medical value of hygiene, Mother Marianne never feared the fatal disease, predicting correctly that none of her sisters would ever contract it.

Mother Marianne died on Aug. 9, 1918, at age 80 of natural causes and is buried in Kalaupapa.

Mother Marianne’s canonization cause officially started 23 years ago when Bishop John J. Scanlan established a diocesan commission to write a historical report on her life for submission to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The report was completed and accepted by the Vatican in 1983.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints’ committee of historians approved Mother Marianne’s cause in 1996.

Mother Marianne’s example inspired many women, including Sister Mary Laurence, to follow her path as a Franciscan Sister of Syracuse. Her congregational descendents have remained leaders in health care and education both in New York and Hawaii. About 50 of the community’s sisters are from Hawaii.

In Hawaii, the Franciscan Sisters run St. Francis Medical Center and St. Francis Medical Center-West, two hospices, numerous health facilities and clinics, and St. Francis School for girls.