Vatican recognition of ‘miracle’ clears the way for the last major step on the way to sainthood

By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

It is official. Mother Marianne Cope of Molokai will be beatified. The yearning of an American religious congregation, the dream of an isolated Hawaiian community, will be realized, perhaps next year.

On Dec. 20, in the presence of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican formally issued a decree clearing the way for the beatification of the Franciscan nun who, 122 years ago, journeyed 5,000 miles to aid a desperate PacificIsland kingdom stricken with the biblical scourge of leprosy.

The Vatican decree recognized a miracle attributed to Mother Marianne’s intercession — the unexplained healing about a decade ago of a U.S. girl who had experienced multiple organ failure and was expected to die. The girl recovered after prayers sought Mother Marianne’s intercession.

Mother Marianne was a leading hospital administrator and the superior of her order Syracuse, N.Y., in 1883 when she responded to the Hawaiian government’s appeal for health care workers to care for Hansen’s disease patients in Honolulu.

In New York, she had opened two hospitals, one of them a teaching institution. They were among the first 50 hospitals in the country.

She arrived in Hawaii on Nov. 8, 1883, at age 45, with six other Franciscan sisters. She was soon running the KakaakoBranchHospital in Honolulu where she also opened Kapiolani Home for the daughters of leprosy patients. Within a few years she had founded Maui’s first general hospital.

Mother Marianne arrived at the Kalaupapa leprosy settlement on Molokai in 1888, a few months before the death of Blessed Damien de Veuster. She succeeded Father Damien as the settlement’s guiding force. She died on Aug. 9, 1918, of natural causes.

“Everyone is in awe that it is finally happening,” said Sister William Marie Eleniki, who began her second term as regional administrator of the Franciscan Sisters in Hawaii this month.

“It’s wonderful,” she said of the Vatican decree, “when you think of all the people who prayed for Mother Marianne” to be beatified.

In Syracuse, the head of the Franciscan Sisters called the announcement a “blessing.”

“Everyone here is very happy and very pleased with this gift,” said Sister Grace Anne Dillenschneider, general minister of the Syracuse Franciscans in a telephone interview.

She called it a “blessing on the new community” that will be created Jan. 1 when the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse merge with two other Franciscan communities in upstate New York.

The remains of Mother Marianne, now resting in Kalaupapa, will soon reside at the motherhouse she left more than a century ago.

The body of Mother Marianne will be exhumed, as required by beatification procedures, on Jan. 24, the day after her 167th birthday, for positive identification and the collection of second class relics, such as pieces of clothing and personal artifacts.

The remains will be taken, probably in early February, to the Franciscan motherhouse where they will be kept in a reliquary in the main chapel until a shrine can be constructed to house them. A permanent accessible shrine is another church requirement for beatification.

The chapel, officially called St Anthony Convent Chapel, is the “heart to our community” said Sister Grace Anne.

When Mother Marianne’s body passes through Honolulu, the Franciscans plan to have an “aloha ceremony” at the Franciscan convent in Manoa, the headquarters for the sisters in Hawaii and the residence of many retired sisters, and possibly another ceremony at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.

Sister Grace Anne said that a beatification date has not yet been announced, but she expects it to be sometime in 2005. Beatifications are usually done three or four at a time in Rome.

Rapid development of cause

2004 was an extraordinary year for the director of Mother Marianne’s canonization cause, Franciscan Sister Laurence Mary Hanley of Syracuse. It was the year a billowy Vatican wind filled the sails of the sainthood candidate’s case, blowing it from uncertain seas to where beatification is in plain sight.

Though lauded as a “saint” both during her lifetime and upon her death, Mother Marianne’s cause did not get serious Vatican attention until the mid-1970s when a “postulator,” or representative for the cause, was named in Rome.

The Franciscans had dutifully compiled data and testimony since Mother Marianne’s death, and in 1973 had appointed Sister Mary Laurence to be in charge of the collection.

Sister Mary Laurence, herself a Syracuse native, had considered a vocation with a contemplative order when she read a biography of Mother Marianne and was “inspired by her selflessness and courage.”

After a 30-year career teaching in New York and New Jersey schools, she was handed the canonization assignment and quickly became immersed in the saint-making process. It is not a job for a person who requires immediate results. Rather, the director of a cause must be someone willing to venture into the complex maze of the Vatican, which runs on its own mystifying timeframe and inscrutable inclinations, powered, we are told, by the Holy Spirit.

Nevertheless, Sister Mary Laurence’s got results. Based on the strength of its supporting documentation, Mother Marianne’s cause soon floated to the top 150 of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints’ 2,000-3,000 cases. Still, with only a handful of beatifications done a year, top tier could still mean a long wait.

“To me, it seems outstanding,” Sister Mary Laurence said, of the rapid progress of the cause.

Mother Marianne took the first major step on the road to sainthood on April 19 of this year when she received from the pope the title “venerable,” based on a convincing documented case for her “heroic sanctity.”

The next step, approval of a miracle attributed to the candidate’s intercession, usually takes years. For Mother Marianne it took eight months.

Casting their verdicts along the way are committees of theologians, historians, doctors, and bishops, any of which could cut short a cause.

“Many candidates for sainthood get as far as venerable and don’t go further,” Sister Mary Laurence said.

The majority of the miracles claims are not accepted, she said.

However, Mother Marianne’s cause has been receiving unanimous judgments all along the way.

“We had an excellent miracle case, a well recommended miracle case,” she said.

But Sister Mary Laurence believes all the emphasis on the required “miracle” is misplaced.

Mother Marianne’s life of heroic virtue is the real proof she deserves beatification, she said, not the “miracle” attributed to her intercession.

That miracle is just God’s “stamp of approval,” she said. The cure is God’s way of saying “I agree” that this is a holy person, “a confirmation of the person’s heroic sanctity.”

After beatification, a second miracle will be required for canonization.

Mother Marianne was more than exemplary, said Sister Mary Laurence. She was the one whom many others — themselves holy and heroic — regarded as their “exemplar.”

That’s the difference, she said. Mother Marianne stood out in an extraordinary way. Kalaupapa, with all its challenges, was not the motivation for her sanctity; rather, her charity, humility and compassion were demonstrated long before she came to Hawaii.

In her New York hospitals, “she accepted patients that no one else would accept, such as alcoholics and unwed mothers,” Sister Mary Laurence said.

In those days, hospitals only took in patients with “good moral standards.” she said. “She accepted them if they were sick. She was highly criticized for that.”

A person of such vision, talent and administrative abilities was greatly over-qualified to labor in the tiny remote colony of Kalaupapa with its single illness that no one could cure, Sister Mary Laurence said. Yet Mother Marianne cheerfully accepted what she considered to be God’s will, bringing dignity and normalcy to lives discarded by society and disfigured by disease.

A modern beatification serves as a way for the church to hold up a life of particular sanctity as an example for people today.

According to Sister Grace Anne, that example would be Mother Marianne’s “willingness to take risks,” her “readiness to reach out to those in most need” and “to go where she is needed” and her “ability to work peacefully with others.”

“And her total dependence on God,” she added.

“She certainly has had an impact in Hawaii in the mission and ministry of our sisters,” Sister Grace Anne said. The two New York hospitals she opened are still in operation.

The Syracuse Franciscans are Hawaii’s largest religious order of women. They own two major Oahu hospitals and one all-girls high school and work in education, health care and pastoral ministry across the state.

Hawaii-born sisters make up about 20 percent of the entire congregation and have served in all levels of congregational governance.

Sister William Marie sees Mother Marianne’s example as a direct challenge for the present Franciscan community. “We have a lot more to do and a lot more to achieve,” she said.

Decrees in other causes

Decrees relative to 21 other causes, including that of the French hermit, Father Charles de Foucauld, were announced with that of Mother Marianne, who was the only American on the list.

Father de Foucauld was born in 1858 and served in the French army in Algeria. In 1886, he underwent a religious conversion and, for a time, was part of a Trappist community, but he left to become a hermit in Palestine.

In 1901, he moved to Tamanrasset, Algeria. He was killed during an anti-French uprising in 1916.

Another candidate now ready for beatification is German Cardinal Clemens von Galen, who served as bishop of Munster during Adolf Hitler’s regime.

The cardinal, known as the “Lion of Munster,” was an outspoken opponent of Hitler’s violations of the rights of the church, his racial policies and, particularly, the Nazi regime’s policy of using physicians to induce the deaths of the handicapped and mentally ill.

The cardinal died in 1946, one month after receiving his red hat from Pope Pius XII.