Sister of Saint Francis, mother to society’s outcasts and America’s missionary to leprosy patients

By Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, OSF | Special to the Herald

Mother Marianne, formerly Barbara Koob (variants: Kob, Kopp, and now officially Cope) was born on Jan. 23, 1838, and baptized the following day in what is now SE Hessen, West Germany. She was the daughter of farmer Peter Koob and Barbara Witzenbacher Koob. Peter Koob’s first wife had nine children before she died, only two of whom reached adulthood.

By his second wife, Barbara’s mother, Peter Koob had five children in Germany and five in the United States. In 1839, the year following Barbara’s birth, the family emigrated to the United States to seek opportunity.

The Koob family became members of St. Joseph Parish in Utica, N.Y., where the children attended the parish school. In 1848, Barbara received her First Holy Communion and was confirmed at St. John Parish in Utica when, in accordance with the practice of the time, the bishop of the diocese came to the largest church in the area to administer these two sacraments at the same ceremony.

When Peter Koob became a naturalized American citizen in the 1850s so did his children who were minors at the time including his daughter Barbara.

Mother Marianne wrote of experiencing a religious life calling at an early age but that following her vocation was delayed nine years because of her family obligations. After completing an eighth grade education and being the oldest child at home, she went to work in a factory to support the family when her father became an invalid. Only when her younger siblings were of age to be self-providing did she feel free to enter the convent. She did so one month after her father’s death in the summer of 1862. She was 24.

Growth in religious life

Barbara entered the Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse, N.Y., and, on Nov. 19, 1862, she was invested at the Church of the Assumption. She soon became known as Sister Marianne.

One year later, in the same church and on the same day of the month, Sister Marianne was professed as a religious. She was soon serving as a teacher and principal in several beginning schools in New YorkState. She had joined the Franciscan order in Syracuse with the intention of doing schoolwork, but her life soon became a series of administrative appointments.

As a member of the governing boards of her religious community, she participated during the 1860s in the establishment of two of the first hospitals in the central New York area, St. Elizabeth in Utica (1866) and St. Joseph in Syracuse (1869).

Both Franciscan-founded hospitals had unique charters for their time — they were open to the sick without distinction as to a person’s nationality, religion or color. These two hospitals were among the first 50 general hospitals in the entire United States.

Leader in field of medicine

Mother Marianne began her new career as nurse-administrator at St. JosephHospital in 1870, heading the facility for six of its first seven years. Her change in ministry to hospital administration emerged as a result of her promising abilities and talents for leadership. No hospital had succeeded in Syracuse before the one begun by the Franciscan Sisters.

It was said that no challenge ever seemed too much for Mother Marianne. She possessed the intelligence and charisma of a facilitator and the energies of a woman motivated by God alone.

St. Joseph , the first hospital in Syracuse opened to the public, owed much of its creation, as well as its survival, to its administrator. Mother Marianne was an innovator when it came to providing better service to patients. Long before cleanliness was considered essential in the care of the sick, she strictly advocated the simple washing of hands and other hygienic practices before ministering to the patients.

It was during her time at St. Joseph that the College of Medicine in Geneva, N.Y., moved to the fledgling SyracuseUniversity to become the College of Physicians and Surgeons, starting a new arena of medicine for upstate New York. No small reason for re-locating the college in Syracuse was Mother Marianne accepting its medical students for instruction at St. Joseph.

Far ahead of her time in furthering patients’ rights, she secured in her negotiations with the medical college the right of any patient, if he or she wished, to refuse to be brought before medical students.

Mother Marianne was also criticized for accepting “outcast” patients, such as alcoholics, an affliction frowned upon for hospital admittance by the medical profession at the time. Unsurprisingly, she became well known and loved in the central New York area for her kindness, wisdom and down to earth practicality.

And so even before the advent of nursing schools in the United States, by working besides doctors from one of the country’s most progressive medical colleges, this dedicated woman of God gained the practical information about hospital systems, nursing techniques and pharmacy work, all of which she would later put to good use in Hawaii.

Call to Hawaii

Mother Marianne was well prepared for the unique call she received in 1883 when opening her mail as provincial mother, the title she had reached in her Syracuse religious community.

In 1883, the United States was still the land of the pioneer. Religious communities serving immigrants and others had their hands full, including the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse. Priorities were difficult to determine. It was understandable that the pleas from the faraway Sandwich Islands for a capable leader to begin a system of hospital nursing went unheeded by dozens of religious communities.

That is, it did until it grasped the heart of Mother Marianne and she said yes. Her entire personal affirmation and acceptance of the mission was given when she learned that the primary work was to minister to leprosy patients. “I am not afraid of any disease...” was her rare response to such a perilous invitation. Her devotion to Saint Francis of Assisi who deeply cared for the sick poor, together with a special concern for those with leprosy, confirmed her resolve that the call to Hawaii was God’s will.

Six sisters were chosen from among the 35 volunteers of her congregation. Mother Marianne accompanied them to the islands to help them get settled in their assignments.

On Nov. 8, 1883, as the SS Mariposa entered the harbor of Honolulu, the bells of Our Lady of Peace Cathedral rang and crowds gathered on the wharf to see the sisters. No one would be disappointed in the great expectations their coming promised. Only two years later, Mother Marianne had accomplished so much good that she was decorated by King Kalakaua with the medal of the Royal Order of Kapiolani for acts of benevolence bestowed on the suffering people of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

The work wasn’t without trials and tribulations. In 1884, at the request of the government she set up MalulaniHospital, the first general hospital on the island of Maui. Called back with haste to Oahu to the the BranchHospital in Kakaako, she had to resolve the problem of the government-appointed administrator abusing leprosy patients. She demanded that the government choose between his dismissal and the sisters’ return to New York.

The government chose the sisters and gave Mother Marianne full charge of the overcrowded facility. This appointment, considered by the government and church authorities to be crucial to the success of the mission, delayed her expected return to Syracuse.

The work kept increasing. Another pressing need was met a year later in November 1885 after she convinced the government that it was vital to shelter and safeguard the homeless daughters of leprosy patients. The result was Kapiolani Home, opened on the grounds of the Kakaako hospital. Having a home for healthy children on the premises of a leprosy hospital was an unusual choice of location, but a necessary one since no one, other than the sisters, would care for the children of people with the dreaded disease.

Renewed call to Molokai

Blessed Damien De Veuster in his time was rightly called the “Apostle to the Lepers” (a word we don’t use today). Yet, this good priest did not act alone when it came to providing care or protection or shelter for leprosy patients. In addition to fulfilling her own goals for her patients, Mother Marianne brought to fruition many programs Blessed Damien only envisioned.

Mother Marianne met Father Damien for the first time in January 1884, when in apparent good health, he came to Oahu to attend the dedication of a chapel at the hospital she was to head. Two years later, in 1886, after he had been diagnosed with leprosy, Mother Marianne alone gave hospitality to the priest who, because of his affliction, had become an unwelcome visitor to church and government leaders in Honolulu.

She arranged for his care with sensitivity and made sure he was treated well during his short stay on Oahu. Her caring turned other leaders around to his favor especially after a visit to the hospital by royalty was arranged.

Soon afterward, policies toward leprosy patients began to change. They became stricter. Most new patients were not sent into exile on Molokai for several years after diagnosis. But in 1887, when a new government took charge, its officials closed the Kakaako hospital and receiving station and reinforced an earlier alienation policy. The question was who would care for the additional patients now begin shipped to Kalaupapa.

Mother to outcasts

Mother Marianne herself again responded to a new plea for help from the new Hawaiian government leadership in 1888. Her positive response would result in a lifetime of exile spent together with those she served.

Because her presence had become necessary for the success of the Franciscan mission, she again had to face the choice of rejecting the call or never again returning home to see her beloved family and friends again.

Again, she followed the path of sacrifice.

“We will cheerfully accept the work,” she courageously responded to the official government appeal asking for someone to found a new home for the female patients at the Kalaupapa settlement.

“Our hearts are bleeding to see them shipped off,” she wrote Damien. She further explained in mail sent home to New York that it had been her intent from the beginning to set up a mission on Molokai to care for the exiles. She would follow God’s will regardless of her personal losses.

Arriving at Kalaupapa with two youthful assistants several months before Damien’s death, she consoled the ailing priest by assuring him she would provide for his beloved patients at the Boys’ Home in Kalawao at the other end of the settlement. Two weeks after Damien died on April 15, 1889, Board of Health in Honolulu officially gave her that assignment.

She then set about building an entirely new boy’s home, named in honor of Henry P. Baldwin, its chief benefactor. After its completion in 1895 and at her suggestion, religious brothers were brought in to run the home while she withdrew the sisters to the needy Bishop Home where she needed assistance. The government placed “Brother” Joseph Dutton who once helped Damien and later became her assistant was placed in charge of the Baldwin Home.

Heroine of Molokai

Mother Marianne’s philosophy in treating patients was far ahead of her time. Never forgetting the value of education, she promoted programs and classes in Syracuse, Honolulu and Kalaupapa to fit the needs of patients. In Kalaupapa, she encouraged color harmony, needlework and landscaping. The pastor of Kalaupapa’s St. Francis Church was invited to give patients religious instruction and spiritual direction, and those who were not Catholic were free to see their pastors.

The legacy of Mother Marianne continues its far-reaching effects in health care and education. There are the Franciscan-run medical centers in Utica and Syracuse, the latter which owes a special gratitude to Mother Marianne. And, although the number of patients in Kalaupapa today are few, the Franciscans still serve there.

In 1927, the sisters opened St.FrancisHospital in Honolulu, which today is the center of a wide-ranging health care system extending to the other major islands in Hawaii. Franciscan Sisters also work at several island schools and parishes.

What lives on most is the story of compassionate care brought to others by Mother Marianne in the spirit of Christ and his follower Saint Francis, a comfort given to the body and soul of each person encountered in Franciscan apostolic work today.

Upon her death on Aug. 9, 1918, of natural causes, Mother Marianne was extolled as a “heroine.” Robert Louis Stevenson, nearly 30 years previously in a visit to Kalaupapa, expressed in verse his own appreciation of Mother Marianne and her sister-nurses. He wrote poignantly of “beauty springing from the breast of pain” in the comforting presence of devoted nurses:

“He marks the sisters on the painful shores,

“And even a fool is silent and adores."

Sainthood cause

The Sisters of Saint Francis began collecting materials soon after Mother Marianne’s death for her eventual canonization. On Oct. 24, 2003, theologians at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared her heroically virtuous. On April 19, 2004, Pope John Paul II issued the decree officially naming her “venerable.”

The late pope approved a miracle attributed to her intercession on Dec. 20. 2004. The miracle was the medically unexplainable healing of a young New York girl dying from multiple organ failure.

Another verified miracle after her beatification would lead to her canonization.

More information and prayer cards can be obtained from the Cause of Mother Marianne, Sisters of Saint Francis, 1024 Court St., Syracuse, N.Y.13208 or mmariannecause @a-znet.com