A planned statue of Mother Marianne Cope looking across the ocean toward Moloka'i, where she ministered to the Hansen's disease patients of Kalaupapa, has passed an important step on its way to becoming a memorial at Kaka'ako Waterfront Park.

She's the first woman with Hawai'i ties to be beatified, and now is on the path to sainthood. But why a monument in Kaka'ako?

The Hawai'i Community Development Authority requires that any group that wants to erect a monument at the park establish a connection between the subject and the place, said Anthony Ching, the authority's executive director.

Mother Marianne certainly had that: The nun from Syracuse, N.Y., who came here as a member of the Sisters of St. Francis, was stationed at the Kaka'ako Branch Hospital, a receiving center for Hansen's disease patients, he said.

The receiving center was probably across the street from the mudflats that were later used as a garbage dump and eventually became Kaka'ako Waterfront Park.

There's another connection, too.

Research turned up a detail that clearly delighted Ching: Mother Marianne used to cast a line into the water off the point.

"I imagine her fishing," said Ching, who was raised Catholic. "I can just imagine her out there in her robes, with a pail, casting out."

For more on this story, see tomorrow's Honolulu Advertiser.