By Patrick Downes | Hawaii Catholic Herald

Pope John Paul II will beatify Venerable Mother Marianne Cope of Molokai on Pentecost Sunday, May 15, at the Vatican.

The Sisters of St. Francis announced the date on Feb. 21 from the order’s motherhouse in Syracuse where Mother Marianne left 122 years ago to care for the victims of leprosy in Hawaii.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano had informed Franciscan Father Ernesto Piacentini, the postulator of the Cause of Mother Marianne, of the beatification date in a letter dated Feb. 12.

The pope will also beatify on May 15 Charles de Foucauld, the famous French priest who was killed in 1916 during an anti-French uprising in southern Algeria after living for years as a hermit in Palestine. Also scheduled for beatification are seven Spanish martyrs killed in 1936 during the Spanish civil war and two other women religious.

The Vatican paved the way for Mother Marianne’s beatification last year with a Dec. 20 decree recognizing a miracle attributed to her intercession — the unexplained healing about a decade ago of a New York girl who had experienced multiple organ failure and was expected to die. The girl recovered after prayers sought Mother Marianne’s intercession.

In anticipation of her beatification, Mother Marianne’s remains were exhumed from her grave in Kalaupapa on Jan. 24. After farewell ceremonies on Molokai and Oahu, her bones were carried a week later to the Franciscan motherhouse in Syracuse where they will be enshrined.

Barbara Koob was born on Jan. 23, 1838, in Heppenheim, Germany, and was not yet two when her parents brought her and her three siblings to settle in Utica, N.Y. She became a U.S. citizen when her father was naturalized in 1855. The family later Americanized their surname as Cope.

Barbara took Marianne as her religious name when she joined the Sisters of St. Francis.

Mother Marianne was a leading hospital administrator and the superior of her order in Syracuse in 1883 when she responded to the Hawaiian government’s appeal for health care workers to care for Hansen’s disease patients in Honolulu.

In New York, she had opened two hospitals, one a teaching institution, that were among the first 50 hospitals in the country.

She arrived in Hawaii on Nov. 8, 1883, at age 45, with six other Franciscan sisters. They first worked at the KakaakoBranchHospital in Honolulu where Mother Marianne opened Kapiolani Home for the daughters of leprosy patients. She also founded Maui’s first general hospital.

Mother Marianne arrived at the Kalaupapa leprosy settlement on Molokai in 1888, a few months before the death of Blessed Damien de Veuster. She succeeded Father Damien as the settlement’s guiding force. She died there on Aug. 9, 1918, of natural causes.

Beatification — receiving the title of “Blessed” — is the final major step before sainthood.

Mother Marianne had reached the first major stage, being named “venerable,” only last year on April 19 following an intense study of her life by the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Once beatified, Mother Marianne will be given a feast day on the church calendar and public prayer during Mass and other liturgical functions asking for her intercession will be permitted. Canonization requires one more miracle attributed to her after her beatification.

Father Damien DeVeuster was beatified on Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 1995, exactly 10 years ago. He had originally be scheduled to be beatified on May 15, 1994, but the ceremony was delayed a year after Pope John Paul broke his hip.