By Lisa Benoit | Hawaii Catholic Herald

KALAUPAPA

The event was bittersweet — both sad and celebratory — as reflected on the faces and, no doubt, in the hearts of those attending to the removal of Mother Marianne Cope’s remains from her burial site in Kalaupapa for transport to her place of final rest in her motherhouse and hometown of Syracuse, N.Y.

The departure of her body from the land in which she served for 35 years is required by the church, now that the founder of the Franciscan mission in Hawaii is a candidate of sainthood. She is expected to be beatified this year.

The exhumation process formally began the morning of Jan. 24 with an official diocesan tribunal ceremony led by diocesan judicial vicar Father Joseph Grimaldi.

Mother Marianne’s bones were located by the volunteer forensic team early Monday afternoon, Jan. 24, (as the Hawaii Catholic Herald was going to press).

Two forensic anthropologists, Vince Sava, who is directing the exhumation, and Roger Antrim, had been in Kalaupapa since Saturday, Jan. 22, to prepare the process. By the time the rest of the five-person team arrived Sunday afternoon, the men had already cleared about four feet deep of soil.

Helping them were several members of Mother Marianne’s order, the Franciscan Sisters themselves.

“Sister Davilyn and a lot of the other sisters were there off and on during the day,” Sava said. “They clipped roots and handed us tools. Picking up rocks and stuff we threw out of the hole. We found five crosses that were all in a cluster.”

Franciscan Sister Davilyn Ah Chick worked most of the day with Jennifer Cerny, a cultural anthropologist for the National Park Service in Kalaupapa.

Four of the crosses discovered were metal and one was a ceramic figure of Jesus which Sava believes was part of a crucifix, the wood of which had decayed.

The members of the forensic team did the digging, taking turns. They shoveled the soil into a 10-gallon bucket, which was taken to three sifters hanging under a tarp about five feet away.

The work was done using shovels and hand tools. When they got closer to the grave shaft, they switched to trowels and finer instruments. They will use dental picks, spoons and other small instruments for the remains themselves.

The exhumation was scheduled to coincide with Mother Marianne’s birthday, Jan 23, the day before.

At a prayer service that evening in Kalaupapa’s parish church of St. Francis, Franciscan Sister Marion Kikukawa, vice postulator for the Cause of Mother Marianne, said, “It is her 167th birthday and we celebrate this woman whose life and virtue has been an inspiration.”

Born and raised on Molokai, Sister Marion reflected about growing up on topside Molokai and going with friends to the Kalaupapa lookout to “gaze over at the peninsula.” She remembers the stories her mother told of Father Damien and Mother Marianne.

“As a native of Molokai, I embrace Mother Marianne as ohana because she came here to Hawaii thinking she would be setting things up, then going back to Syracuse,” Sister Marion said. “She truly became a child of the land and a women of this place.”

A small choir, led by Robert Mondoy and Calvin Liu, with members from the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu and St. John Vianney and St. Anthony Parishes in Kailua, sang at the vigil and for the candlelight procession to the grave that followed.

On the warm and breezy night, under the light of the full moon, about 40 people processed from the church to the gravesite for a few moments of silent reflection.

Sister Frances Therese Souza, one of the two Franciscans working in Kalaupapa, said that it was on her birthday, April 19, that Mother Marianne was named “venerable,” the first formal step toward canonization.

“I don’t get passionate about things, but I can tell you that I am very passionate about Mother Marianne,” said Sister Frances Therese Souza. “I have been here energetically with her for 16 years and I feel we’re connected.”

Diocesan administrator Father Thomas Gross presided at the 8 a.m. Mass and the official ceremony marking the start of the exhumation. Celebrating with him were Father Grimaldi, Sacred Hearts Father Joseph Hendricks, pastor of St. Francis Church, and about 75 others, including 23 Sisters of St. Francis.

Dr. Paul DeMare, the great, great great grandnephew of Mother Marianne, and a radiation oncologist at St. Francis Medical Center in Honolulu, was also at the opening ceremony.

“I am happy to be here,” he said. “I am observing history.”

Sister Mary Lawrence Hanley, the Sister of St. Francis who has been the director of the cause of Mother Marianne since 1977, and is co-author with historian O.A. Bushnell of the Mother Marianne biography, “A Song of Pilgrimage and Exile,” is elated by the course of events.

“I think it just wonderful,” she said.

“It is all providential,” she said of the process, which has been blessed by many things, she said, including the volunteering of expert forensic anthropologists.

At the gravesite, Father Grimaldi asked Kalaupapa residents Nellie McCarthy and Paul Harada to serve as “witnesses” to the fact that Mother Marianne was buried there.

McCarthy, who came to Kalaupapa in 1941, said that she is pleased to be a part of the proceedings.

“I am looking forward to the beatification,” she said.