|Rainbow over Kalaupapa|
This followed her first miracle involved healing a 14-year old with a fatal health condition. According to Syracuse.com: "In 2004, Vatican officials ruled that a miraculous recovery involving a 14-year-old Syracuse girl in 1993 was the result of Mother Marianne’s intercession. The girl, Kate Mahoney, nearly died from complications after cancer surgery at Crouse Hospital. Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, a Franciscan nun, visited Mahoney in the hospital and prayed to Mother Marianne to intercede with God on her behalf. Others also prayed for her to Mother Marianne. The Sisters of St. Francis have a shrine to Mother Marianne at their residence on Court Street in Syracuse."
|Saint Damien sscc|
The path to sainthood for Cope has also been a long one. She died in 1918 and was buried in Kalaupapa.
|Sr Marianne Cope|
Cope was born in Germany, but her family moved to the United States eventually settling in Utica. After joining the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse in 1862, she established two hospitals there.
Always caring for the sick and abandoned, she brought a group of sisters to Hawaii in 1883 to care for those with Hansens disease. When the patients were sent to Kalaupapa, Molokai, in an effort to keep the disease from spreading, she moved there in 1888 and continued to care for the patients for 30 years. She promised the sisters who came with her that none of them would ever contract leprosy and she kept her word.
Cope, who has historical tribute to her work at the Kalaupapa lookout on Molokai, is deemed the "beloved mother of the outcasts." Her remains were exhumed in 2005 by the church to prepare her for canonization.
Author: Malia Zimmerman