Blessed nun’s feast day celebrated at Kalaupapa

Residents and visitors honor the nurse who aided leprosy outcasts

Kalaupapa, Molokai » A joyous hometown celebration yesterday honored a woman who served Hawaii's neediest people in the humblest circumstances, a life that brought her recognition as one of the brightest lights of Christianity.

For the residents and visitors in Kalaupapa, the church service and a party remembering Mother Marianne Cope was a homecoming celebration. Participants said the Franciscan nun and nurse who served leprosy patients in Kalaupapa for 30 years before her death in 1918 is a model for the future.

A 5:30 p.m. Mass today at Our Lady of Peace Cathedral will continue the celebration. Today is the first time that Cope's name appears in the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church that recognizes the apostles, evangelists, martyrs and great theologians. Cope's name was added to the array after she was beatified last May, the second of three steps to sainthood.

"The church finally woke up," said Olivia Breitha, 89, who knows the stories of Cope and Father Damien DeVeuster as well as her own. She has lived in Kalaupapa for 70 years. "We're lucky. We have two saints in this place." She said it is meaningful to keep honoring the two, who were devoted to the health and safety as well as spiritual lives of patients a century ago.

"They aren't just history. We're not history yet. We're still alive," said Breitha, who told her story in a book, "Olivia: My Life in Exile in Kalaupapa." She is one of 28 remaining former Hansen's disease patients who chose to live in Kalaupapa although the quarantine ended in 1967.

Sister William Marie Eleniki, one of 20 sisters of St. Francis who flew into the remote Molokai peninsula for the day, said, "This is our homecoming, our roots." Cope brought six other Franciscan nuns from Syracuse, N.Y., in 1883, and others followed. The religious order founded hospitals on Maui and Oahu.

Although the Franciscans are in the process of selling the Oahu hospitals as they did Maui Memorial Hospital years ago, the order is not history, either, said Eleniki, regional administrator. She said having the Cope feast day on the calendar "is the beginning of the next event." Eleniki is on a commission just organized by Hawaii Bishop Larry Silva to promote Cope and DeVeuster through education programs and pilgrimages.

Cope had a "longing to lead others to Jesus, not by spectacular means, but by simple, kindly, life-healing deeds," said Silva, who presided at Mass in St. Francis Church. He said the story of her heroic virtue continues to show people "that extraordinary freedom is ours when we let ourselves be caught by Jesus."

Among the 70 people at the Mass in the church built during Cope's lifetime was Vincent Sava, a forensic anthropologist who led a professional team that excavated Cope's grave site last January.

Franciscan sisters carried the skull and bone fragments to Syracuse, where a shrine will be built. But Kalaupapa residents feel that Cope is still with them. "Most of her is still buried here," said Breitha. "She's ours."

Yesterday's ceremonies began at Cope's grave site, where Silva reminded the crowd that "we are a people who think about empty tombs," referring to the basic Christian tenet that Christ rose from the dead, leaving his tomb empty. Silva laid a maile lei on the grave before he and the Rev. Joseph Hendriks, Kalaupapa pastor, and the Rev. Khanh Hoang, administrator of St. Jude Church in Kapolei, led the crowd on a two-block walk to the church.

One of Cope's favorite songs, "O Makalapua," written by Queen Liliuokalani, was sung in the celebration. A new hymn composed by Patrick Downes, "Blessed Mother Marianne," was introduced. Both will be sung today at the Catholic cathedrals in Honolulu and Syracuse.

The Rev. Pam Vessels, pastor of the Protestant congregation of Ka Anaana Hou Church, attended the service, as did state Department of Health and National Park Service employees who make up the majority of the population of Kalaupapa. The peninsula has been administered as a National Historic Park for the past 15 years.