‘Beauty springing from the breast of pain’

By Sister Mary Laurence | Special to the Herald

Mother Marianne Cope was born Barbara Koob on Jan. 23, 1838, in Hessen, West Germany, the fifth of 10 children of Peter Koob, a farmer, and Barbara Witzenbacher Koob.

A year after she was born, the family immigrated to Utica, N.Y. where the surname Koob was eventually changed to Cope. Barbara became a U.S. citizen when her father was naturalized.

Though she felt called to religious life at an early age, Barbara delayed entering the convent to support her family and ill father. She joined the Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse, N.Y., a month after her father’s death in 1862, taking the religious name Marianne.

As a young sister, she served as a teacher and principal in several New York schools. It has been her intention to be an educator, but her life soon became a series of administrative appointments. As a member of the Franciscan Sisters governing board, she helped establish two of central New York’s first hospitals, St. Elizabeth’s in Utica (1866) and St. Joseph’s in Syracuse (1869).

Unique for their time, both hospitals served the sick no matter their nationality, religion or color.

Mother Marianne undertook the job as head administrator of St. JosephHospital with innovation, intelligence, charisma and energy. Long before hospitals understood the importance of cleanliness, she demanded sanitary conditions when caring for patients. She was also a firm advocate for patients’ rights and accepted those others rejected.

In 1883, Mother Marianne answered a desperate plea from the Hawaiian government for someone to begin a system of hospital nursing. It was an appeal already turned down by dozens of other religious communities.

She accepted the mission even when she learned she was to care mainly for leprosy patients. “I am not afraid of any disease,” she said.

Mother Marianne and six sister companions arrived in Hawaii on Nov. 8, 1883.

In 1884, at the government’s request, Mother Marianne opened MalulaniHospital, Maui’s first general hospital. On Oahu, she was given full control of the BranchHospital at Kakaako, which served leprosy patients. In November 1885, she established Kapiolani Home for homeless female children of leprosy patients.

Two years after she arrived, Mother Marianne was honored by King Kalakaua with the medal of the Royal Order of Kapiolani for her acts of benevolence.

In 1887, new government officials closed the Oahu hospital and receiving station for Hansen’s disease patients, sending them directly to Kalaupapa. Mother Marianne extending her mission to Kalaupapa knowing it jeopardized her chance of returning home to Syracuse.

“We will cheerfully accept the work,” she said. She explained by mail to Syracuse that believed it to be God’s will.

Arriving at Kalaupapa with two youthful assistants several months before Damien’s death, Mother Marianne assured the ailing priest that she would care for his patients at the settlement’s Boys’ Home. After he died, she initiated the building of a new Baldwin home, named after its chief benefactor.

Mother Marianne’s treatment of patients was far ahead of her time, encouraging their education and growth, irrespective of the fact that they were dying of a fatal disease. She arranged classes in needlework and landscaping as well as spiritual direction by settlement priests and pastors.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in his visit to Kalaupapa praised Mother Marianne and her sisters in verse, describing their presence as “beauty springing from the breast of pain.” The writer concluded: “He marks the sisters on the painful shores, and even a fool is silent and adores.”

Mother Marianne died on Aug. 9, 1918, of natural causes.

Sister Mary Laurence is the director of the cause of Venerable Mother Marianne Cope of Molokai.