Saying goodbye to Mother Marianne
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
The last earthly remains of Mother Marianne Cope have rested peacefully on the windswept Kalaupapa Peninsula of Moloka'i for decades, far from her home, yet as close as a whispered prayer to the community of souls she loved so much.
National Park Service
But this 19th-century Catholic nun, a woman who may soon become a saint, is about to be the focus of a gentle marriage of science and religion: Her remains will be exhumed next week, identified by an anthropologist and sent to the Mother House of her religious order, the Sisters of St. Francis, in upstate New York.
Mother Marianne is seen here in a wheelchair, surrounded by patients and other nuns, a few days before she died.
The move is a necessary step on the path to sainthood, although it is sure to be a bittersweet event for the dwindling community of Hansen's disease patients living their final years at Kalaupapa. Twenty-five patients still live there. For them, her grave is a physical connection to Cope's legacy.
Cope spent 30 years caring for the needs of the patients who had been banished to the Moloka'i outpost because they suffered from the disease once known as leprosy.
Her faith in them kept her there until she died in 1918. A tall white monument marks her shaded grave.
Last month, the Vatican accepted a miracle attributed to Cope's intercession, clearing the way for beatification. The church must accept a second miracle before Cope could be named as a saint.
National Park Service
The exhumation will be done by a volunteer team of forensic experts from the Pentagon's premier identification lab on O'ahu and witnessed by three Franciscan nuns from Syracuse, N.Y., and several church officials from Honolulu.
A white monument marks the spot where Mother Marianne was buried in Kalaupapa.
Cope's great-great-great nephew, Honolulu radiation oncologist Dr. Paul DeMare, also plans to witness the exhumation.
"Mother Marianne is going back to her roots," said DeMare, 63. "I'm pleased to be a direct viewer of history."
The task is expected to last three to four days, followed by a farewell service for the residents, said Sister Marion Kikukawa, the Big Island nun who has helped oversee the order's Hawai'i efforts to get Cope canonized. A second ceremony will be held on O'ahu.
"I think it is very important," Kikukawa said. "Mother Marianne has been in their midst since 1888. We are trying to be very attentive in this process to the feelings that the patients have and especially for the great love they have for Mother Marianne."
Hope for the exiled
Cope arrived in Hawai'i from Syracuse in 1883. She had agreed to help the Hawaiian government run the Kaka'ako Branch Hospital, which served as a receiving station for Hansen's disease patients.
Five years later, she moved to Kalaupapa and helped establish Bishop Home for more than a hundred homeless girls who had been sent there without their families.
Sister Marianne Cope arrived in Honolulu in 1883. Five years later, she moved to Kalaupapa to help Hansen's disease patients who had been exiled there. She died in 1918 at the age of 80.
If Hawai'i was a pinpoint in the Pacific, then Kalaupapa — isolated and barren — was the head of a pin. Hansen's disease was considered incurable at the time and it was reaching epidemic proportions in Honolulu. The kingdom exiled its unfortunate victims to Kalaupapa to die.
Cope brought meaning to their lives, taught them to sew and play in a band. She worked to erase the stain of being discarded.
She was far from home, though, and always longed to return to Syracuse. Instead she died of natural causes on Moloka'i. She was 80. The patients there carried her wooden coffin to the grave.
"Mother Marianne's desire was always to do the will of God," Kikukawa said. "And as it worked out in her life, she was called to stay with the people of Kalaupapa until she died."
To Be enshrined
Church law states that a person who is beatified or canonized cannot be reburied in a cemetery but must be enshrined in a place that followers can visit. The Franciscan sisters plan to place Cope's remains in their chapel until they decide on a permanent setting. An official beatification ceremony is expected this year.
The sisters visited the tiny community to explain the move to the residents, said 84-year-old Nellie McCarthy, a Catholic and patient who was sent to live at Kalaupapa in 1941. Everyone agreed that the move made sense, she said.
"We don't have any feelings about it," McCarthy said. "We're all for it. We're looking forward to it."
But what will actually be moved remains unknown. There is a lot of uncertainty about what will be found in Cope's grave.
The sisters hope to find Cope's bones and what they call "second-class relics" — items that the nun would have worn or touched in life. They would like to leave one behind for worshippers at Kalaupapa.
Unearthing history
Vince Sava, a Catholic and civilian anthropologist at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory, will supervise the exhumation. Sava studied the soil and said it was not overly acidic, which leads him to think he'll find skeletal remains.
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"In the relative scheme of things, this should not be that difficult," said Sava, who is using vacation time for the job. "But one of the challenges we face is you never know what you are going to find until you actually get down there and find it."
Vince Sava, who works for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory and is a member of St. Jude's Church in Makakilo, will oversee the recovery of Mother Marianne's remains.
His team will start slowly, scraping away a few inches of dirt with hand trowels and sifting it through screens. After probing the grave with a pole in November, he determined that any remains are somewhere between 2 feet and 4 feet below the surface. The soil has reclaimed Cope's coffin, however.
Whatever is found will be taken to a nearby convent run by the nuns and examined in a makeshift lab.
"We are striving for circumstantial identification," Sava said.
State Health Department records indicate Cope was buried in the grave, but Sava will want to confirm that. A trained observer can determine race, sex and approximate age of death by looking at bones, Sava said.
This kind of work is so demanding, so focused, that Sava, a member of St. Jude Church in Makakilo, doubts he'll be thinking about whom he holds in his hands until the end of the day. But the mission, like the quiet peninsula, moves him.
"I have very deep feelings about this project," he said. "I think I've probably put a little more time into it than I would any other comparable project. Whether you are religious or not, you have to realize this person was a great humanitarian and a great historical figure."
When Sava's team is finished, Cope's remains will be sealed in a metal container that will then be soldered shut — a church requirement to prevent someone from tampering with or stealing future religious relics.
Hope lives on
The exhumation holds special meaning for Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, the Syracuse-based director of the order's effort to canonize Cope. She will fly to Hawai'i and make the white-knuckle landing at the short Kalaupapa airstrip.
Hanley has researched Cope's life and virtues since 1973 and co-wrote Cope's biography — "A Song of Pilgrimage and Exile" — with O.A. Bushnell.
More importantly, she has witnessed the power of Cope's intercession — the miracle.
In 1992, a 14-year-old girl in Syracuse suffered multiple organ failure while undergoing chemotherapy. Her family asked Hanley and her sisters to pray to Cope for help. Hanley often gets requests like this, but she was struck by the urgency of the case.
"It was so hopeless," Hanley said. "She was on machines. There wasn't one vital organ that was working correctly. I said prayers to Mother Marianne."
Hanley also visited the girl and held against her forehead a piece of a bookmark that once belonged to Cope.
Cope had written "Sweet Jesus Mercy" on the bookmark, Hanley said.
The girl recovered completely.
Hanley remembers wondering if she should be surprised.
"When you see how sick someone is and it is hopeless and she is dying, you could say: What is the sense of doing things?" she said. "But that is what miracles are all about."
And faith, as well.
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
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The exhumation of Mother Marianne Cope will begin Sunday — the 167th anniversary of her birth — with prayers and a candlelight procession to her Kalaupapa grave. On Monday, a Mass will be held in the morning to celebrate Cope's life followed by another procession to her grave where Father Joseph Grimaldi, vicar general of the Honolulu Diocese, will formally open the exhumation process. The careful hand-digging of the grave and analysis of all remains found will continue through Thursday. Mass will be held each morning. On the morning of Jan. 28, a "Mass of Aloha" and a luncheon for the Kalaupapa residents will be held. Afterward, everyone will be invited to go to the airport to sing farewell to Cope. Her remains will be flown to Honolulu and taken to Borthwick Mortuary. Cope's remains will be taken Jan. 29 to St. Francis Convent in Manoa for a private evening candlelight service. Grimaldi will lead a private Mass for the sisters on the morning of Jan. 30. The public will be allowed to attend a vigil and an afternoon Mass Jan. 31 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on the Fort Street Mall. The vigil starts at 3 p.m. and the Mass at 5 p.m. The vigil will continue after the Mass and there will be a reception in the courtyard. Cope's remains will leave Hawai'i Feb. 1 for Syracuse, N.Y.
THE PROCESS OF CANONIZATION Here are the steps a candidate for sainthood must pass. • Under the Code of Canon Law of 1983, at least five years must pass after the person's death before a candidate's cause can begin. This is meant to allow for greater balance and objectivity in evaluating a case and to let the emotions of the moment dissipate. Mother Marianne's cause officially began in 1983, 65 years after her death. • A group wishing to start a cause must ask the bishop of the diocese in which the person died to begin the investigation into the candidate's life. In Mother Marianne's case, Franciscan sisters in 1988 researched and put together 27 volumes of information, including Mother Marianne's writings, newspaper articles and memoirs of her sister companions. • Once the information is collected, a diocesan tribunal examines it and may call in witnesses. If the tribunal accepts everything, the case can proceed to Rome. At this point, the candidate receives the title "Servant of God." • Once in Rome, the cause awaits examination by theologians who verify the candidate's heroic virtue. If accepted, the candidate receives from the pope the title of "Venerable." Both historical documents and documentation of Mother Marianne's life and virtue was collected. In January 2004, a key Vatican committee unanimously voted to affirm the heroic virtue of Mother Marianne. Her official designation of "Venerable" was approved by the Vatican on April 19. • For a candidate to receive the title of "Blessed," theologians at the Vatican must confirm that the candidate posthumously brought about a miracle. Mother Marianne's cause has reported a miracle — the purported recovery of a 14-year-old girl who appeared to be near death until her family, friends and sisters of St. Francis prayed for the intercession of Mother Marianne. In February 2001, a diocesan tribunal in Syracuse, N.Y., completed a two-year study of a miracle attributed to her intercession and sent the results to Rome. The purported miracle involves the girl's complete recovery in 1992 from multiple organ system failure caused by chemotherapy. Mother Marianne became eligible in December for beatification by the Vatican. • For canonization, a second miracle must be confirmed. — Advertiser Staff
Schedule of events
Correction: Mother Marianne Cope's remains will be taken to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on Jan. 31 for a vigil from 3 to 5 p.m. and a Mass at 5 p.m. The time of the Mass was incorrect in a previous version of this story.
