Sainthood case effort
is coming to Hawaii

Mother Marianne Cope’s
remains will be exhumed

SYRACUSE, N.Y. » Three Franciscan nuns from upstate New York plan to travel to Hawaii to bring back the remains of a woman who led their religious community more than a century ago and might be considered for Catholic sainthood.

"It's a very awesome thing when you think about her having walked out of our Motherhouse in 1883 to go to Hawaii, and here she is coming back," said Sister Grace Anne Dillenschneider, assistant general minister of the Sisters of St. Francis.

Mother Marianne Cope's remains will be placed in the convent's chapel while the women decide whether they will build a special chapel to honor her.

Sister Dillenschneider, Sister Patricia Burkard, general minister of the community, and Sister Mary Laurence Hanley plan to leave Jan. 22. The exhumation is expected to begin Jan. 24. They expect to return with Mother Cope's remains in February.

Pope John Paul II accepted last month a report of a miracle attributed to the intervention of Mother Cope. The case involved a Syracuse teenager who had suffered multiple organ failure and recovered after she was touched by a relic of Mother Cope and prayers sought her intercession in the girl's healing.

That cleared the way for beatification, expected this year, the last step before canonization, or sainthood. As part of the process, Mother Cope's remains must be exhumed and identified.

Once beatified, she takes the title "Blessed" and is assigned a feast day on the church calendar. Acceptance of a second miracle is required for sainthood.

Mother Marianne, born Barbara Koob in Germany in 1838, took the name Marianne in 1862 when she joined the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in New York.

When the kingdom of Hawaii sought help caring for leprosy patients at the Kakaako Branch Hospital in 1883, Mother Marianne and six other sisters volunteered to go to Honolulu.

Five years later she moved to the isolated peninsula of Kalaupapa on Molokai, where she worked and lived until she died in 1918 at age 80.

Meanwhile, efforts to gain sainthood for Father Damien DeVeuster, the Belgian missionary who worked with Mother Marianne in Kalaupapa, hit a snag this month after the Vatican suspended its review of his case, a church official said.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome sent the case back to a Hawaii Catholic church commission for further scrutiny of an Oahu woman's spontaneous cancer cure, which could be the "miracle" required before the priest can be canonized, said Sister Helene Wood, who leads the local effort to gain sainthood for Father Damien.