Saint of the week: Marianne Cope

Aimee Boudreaux MacIver
Jan 15
3 min read

*Mother Marianne (born Barbara Koob) just before she sailed from New York to Hawaii.*

In 1883, Hawaii's King Kalākaua grew increasingly desperate for help caring for the growing numbers of leprosy patients on Oahu. Fr Damien de Veuster was already working around the clock on Molokai, a colony for the most severe cases. But the king needed more help on other islands. He'd asked and been declined by more than 50 religious orders. At the time, leprosy was believed to be a highly contagious death sentence.

Then the king received a letter from a nun who was running a hospital in upstate New York, the superior general of Sisters of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis.

She wrote: "I am hungry for the work and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen Ones, whose privilege it will be, to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders... I am not afraid of any disease, hence it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned lepers."

Her name was Marianne Cope. And she was not afraid to say yes.

Mother Marianne's leadership skills were already renowned from her years of establishing and administrating of the first American public hospitals. She initiated many hospital protocols that have now become norms: her hospital charters required that medical care be given to any person of any race or creed who needed it, and that patients had the right to refuse care from medical students.

Like so many American saints, Marianne was an immigrant and naturalized citizen. Her family had emigrated from Germany when she was just a baby (like many immigrant families, they anglicized their last name: the German Koob became Cope). As the oldest of her siblings, she had waited to enter the Franciscans until her siblings had grown enough to help support the family. Her name, Barbara, also changed when she received her religious name of Marianne.

Mother Marianne and her companion sisters transformed life for leprosy patients on Oahu, Maui, and eventually Molokai. She opened new hospitals and services, battled government corruption and patient mistreatment, and went wherever everyone else feared. One of her major projects became a home for girls who had been orphaned by leprosy—although healthy, they were shunned as pariahs. To Mother Marianne, they became her daughters.

Two of her best tools for restoring and affirming the dignity of her patients: giving them beautiful, colorful clothes and planning lots of fun—because she knew that dry, mechanical, overspiritualization often dulls the truth that the glory of God is man fully alive.

*Mother Marianne helping to prepare the body of Fr Damien for funeral rites.*

She became a closer collaborator in ministry with Fr Damien when he contracted leprosy, then assumed many of his responsibilities when he died. Although she never withdrew from serving the most rejected by society, Marianne never contracted leprosy herself. She spent the rest of her 80 years in Hawaii until her death of natural causes in 1918. Mother Marianne Cope rests now in the same soil where she first set foot to meet a world of unknowns.

Her feast is January 23.

More resources about St Marianne Cope

The Colony: The Harrowing True Story Of The Exiles Of Molokai: This account comes from a more secular perspective, but the narrative nonfiction presentation is rich with research and heartbreaking detail. It mainly focuses on the leper colony as a whole, but I learned a lot about St Damien and St Marianne Cope.
Visit her shrine and a free museum chronicling her life in Syracuse, New York, where she originated her ministry and established many of the state's best hospitals.
If you're in Honolulu, make time for the stunning Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, where St Marianne Cope is buried.
For the especially determined, you can book a tour of her chapel and other sites on Molokai (accessible by air only).