Before his death, Pope John Paul II scheduled a beatification ceremony May 15 for Mother Marianne Cope and 10 others.

However, newly ordained Pope Benedict XVI has scheduled ordinations to the priesthood for that date, Moynihan said.

Moynihan said he sent a request to the Vatican to reschedule the beatification in the immediate future.

"We are hopeful this request will be granted and are anxiously awaiting their reply," Moynihan said.

Patrick Downes, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese in Honolulu, said today he was still hopeful the ceremony would not be delayed.

"I would like to see or hear an official word myself," he said.

Downes is planning to travel to Rome as the representative for the diocese, which has been without a bishop since the Rev. Francis X. DiLorenzo left to become bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Va.

About 40 people from Hawai'i are planning to attend the ceremony, including Kalaupapa resident Winnie Marks Harada, he said.

Another 90 people, including several Franciscan nuns from Hawai'i, were to make up the Syracuse delegation, he said.

Mother Marianne was born Barbara Koob in 1838 in Germany and moved to Utica as a child. In New York, she helped start hospitals in Utica and Syracuse.

In 1883, Mother Marianne and six other Franciscan sisters went to Hawai'i to work with leprosy patients at the Kalaupapa settlement on Moloka'i along side the more famous Belgian missionary Father Damien DeVeuster, who also is a candidate for sainthood.

Mother Marianne left a legacy of schools and orphanages and the Sisters of St. Francis have ministered to leprosy patients in Hawai'i since that time. She died in 1918 at age 80.

In December, Pope John Paul II accepted a report of a miracle attributed to Mother Marianne's intervention. Her body, buried at Kalaupapa, was exhumed in January and returned to Syracuse.

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