HCH photo

Sisters of St. Francis sing the Communion hymn in the 100-year-old St. Francis Church in Kalaupapa, Jan. 19.

 

HCH photo

Sacred Hearts Father Felix Vandebroek preaches.

The Sisters of St. Francis made their annual pilgrimage to Kalaupapa on Jan. 19 to celebrate their Hawaiian beginnings and the feast day of the woman who started it all for them, Blessed Marianne Cope.

The centerpiece of their visit was a mid-morning Mass in the 100-year old St. Francis Church where Mother Marianne, who led the first group of Sisters of St. Francis to Hawaii 125 years ago, worshipped in the last years of her life.

Sacred Hearts Father Felix Vandebroek, a long-time island pastor but new to Kalaupapa, presided at the Mass attended by about 20 mostly island-born sisters, plus special guests and Kalaupapa residents. The harmonies of the St. John Vianney choir, regular Kalaupapa visitors, sweetened the liturgy. Approximately 50 people filled the church’s creaking pews.

Among the visitors was Mother Marianne’s great-great-grand-niece, Meg Burnett of Atlanta. Sister of St. Francis Monica Zmolek of Syracuse, who had visited Kalaupapa several times in the mid-1950s, was returning for the first time in 50 years.

Father Vandebroek borrowed Jesus’s words of invitation to his apostles — “Come and see” — to illustrate Blessed Marianne’s service to the exiles of Kalaupapa.

Considering the fate of those with leprosy, he said, “it was almost impossible to tell the patients that God loved them.”

That lesson could only be taught by action, he said.

“Come and see,” the priest said, speaking allegorically for Mother Marianne. “Look at that young lady. I cleansed her wounds. Look how she is dressed, well fed.”

Blessed Marianne did “simple things,” Father Vandebroek said. “The people saw, and the people believed, and the people accepted.”

His final lesson for the assembly: “Come and see, and then go and do what is asked of you ... and do it as good as you can.”

Sister William Marie Eleniki, regional minister of the Sisters of St. Francis in Hawaii, said that the annual pilgrimage fulfilled a “promise that we come here every year.”

“It’s a joy to be here, a privilege to be here,” she said.

The guests in the congregation outnumbered the resident patients more than 10 to one, clear evidence that community’s final generation is quickly disappearing.

According to Sister of St. Francis Frances Therese Souza, the assistant administrator of Kalaupapa’s hospital, 27 patients retain permanent addresses in Kalaupapa, but only about 16 actually reside there now.

The Mass was one of the opening events commemorating the 125th anniversary this year of Mother Marianne’s arrival to the Kingdom of Hawaii to care for those with Hansen’s disease.

Mother Marianne was a hospital administrator and the superior of her congregation in Syracuse, N.Y., when she traveled to the islands in 1883. To King Kalakaua, she said in 1884, “We bring no gift to Your Majesty except our service in behalf of your suffering people, whose infirmity we bear in our hearts.”

After work in Honolulu and on Maui and the Big Island, Mother Marianne came to Kalaupapa in 1888 and never left. She died in 1918. The sisters’ term of service there has continued for 120 unbroken years.

Her cause for canonization gained momentum about 25 years ago and she was beatified in Rome in 2005.

The sisters also used the Kalaupapa visit as an opportunity to pray over the ailing Richard Marks, one of the community’s most well-known residents and the founder of Damien Tours, and to comfort his sister Winnie Harada whose husband Paul died on Jan. 4. Paul and Winnie lived at Kalaupapa more than 50 years.

After Mass, everyone gathered in the parish hall for a friendly potluck of food prepared by the sisters and friends. “And Costco,” admitted one of the sisters.

That mid-afternoon, after getting their fill of the holy, blustery air that once sustained Blessed Marianne and her simple path to sanctity, the sisters boarded their small chartered planes for the flight back to Honolulu.