The remains of sainthood candidate Mother Marianne Cope are unearthed, honored and carried to her motherhouse in Syracuse

Story and photos by Lisa Benoit

The week of the exhumation of the remains of Mother Marianne Cope from her grave in Kalaupapa opened and closed with a rainbow. As the 2:30 p.m. plane from Oahu carrying participants to the event approached the desolate Molokai peninsula on Jan. 23, the vibrant sign of hope and promise befitting a woman of God arced above the ocean. And at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 28, during the final closing of the galvanized box bearing the bones of the candidate for sainthood, the rainbow appeared again.

The rainbow was only one of a string of miracles surrounding the return of the famed Franciscan nun to the Syracuse, N.Y., motherhouse she left 122 years ago. The biggest wonder was the providential convening of the many men and women, from Hawaii to New York, both Catholic and not, who pooled talents, skills and resources to bring the potential saint back home.

“In a holy way, the people who were here, in all walks of life, appeared to be so devotional and professional, it was like we were all united for one purpose,” said Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, the director of the cause of Mother Marianne for the Sisters of St. Francis.

It was Pope John Paul II’s formal approval in December of the miraculous healing of the New York girl 10 years ago that paved the way for the beatification of Mother Marianne. The cure was attributed to the intersession of the nun who came to Hawaii in 1883 to establish a medical mission for Hawaii’s victims of Hansen’s disease and never left.

Anticipating the pope’s acceptance of the miracle, necessary for beatification, the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse had already decided to bring Mother Marianne’s remains back to the motherhouse. The beatification process requires an exhumation to identify the remains. It also requires the establishment of a permanent and accessible shrine.

The sisters decided that their Syracuse motherhouse would be the shrine’s site.

Kalaupapa’s residents had only a few months to absorb the news that Mother Marianne would be leaving them. Farewells are always sad, especially in the case of someone who had resided there for 30 years in life and 87 years in death.

Twice last year, the Sisters of St. Francis visited the settlement to explain the move and the necessity for it — how Kalaupapa’s loss would be the universal church’s gain.

If Mother Marianne has meaning for the people of Kalaupapa to whom she gave the last years of her life, she also holds a profound and perhaps immeasurable significance for hundreds of sisters in her own congregation, many of whom dedicated their whole lives to follow her personal example.

As a member of a religious order, Sacred Hearts Father Joseph Hendriks, the pastor of St. Francis Parish in Kalaupapa, understood. He said that the exhumation was a sign of the true obedience of Mother Marianne.

“Her superiors decided to take her back and she must obey even unto death,” he said. “It is a perfect example of her life.”

Said resident Paul Harada, “I think they did the right thing.”

Anticipating the time in the not too distant future when Kalaupapa will have no more patients, he said, “When we all leave, no one will be here. A lot of them will not know who she is.”

But he is grateful for the time Mother Marianne rested there. “It gave us time to reflect — to have her buried here,” he said. “It is like a privilege and I feel honored.”

The preparation

The exhumation was led by Vincent Sava, a forensic archeologist with the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu who volunteered after reading about it in the newspaper.

The St. Jude, Makakilo, parishioner was drawn to the project for both its historical and spiritual significance.

“They had mentioned that they were eventually going to have to exhume her remains and that was when lights and bells went off that this would be a good project to get involved in,” Sava said.

The exhumation would mean a mini-invasion of people into the isolated settlement resting below Molokai’s majestic cliffs.

Those attending the historic event almost doubled Kalaupapa’s population for seven days. The 75-or-so visitors included Sisters of St. Francis, Sava’s five-person forensic team, diocesan tribunal members, journalists and photographers, assorted friends, and a small choir.

Getting them there and keeping them housed and fed in a community without restaurants, a hotel or a general store accessible to guests was a minor miracle in itself.

It was accomplished primarily by Franciscan Sister Alicia Damien Lau, chief operating officer of Oahu Care Facility and Pearl City Nursing Home, and Franciscan Sisters Frances Cabrini Morishige and Frances Therese Souza the only sisters still working in Kalaupapa.

The sisters made arrangements for much of the transportation in, the lodging, and about 550 meals. Large quantities of chili, ham, hot dogs, soup, vegetables and other provisions were flown in from Oahu. Frances Padeken, a former nursing assistant in Kalaupapa who is now retired in Kaaawa on Oahu, did most of the food preparation.

A number of the patients, despite having to deal with the loss of someone who signified love, faithfulness and sacrifice, welcomed the visitors for the exhumation with hugs, handshakes and smiles.

And with true typical Kalaupapa hospitality, they stopped by Bishop Home, the Franciscan Sisters’ center of activity, every day to drop off cases of soda and juice, bread, eggs by the dozen, still-warm homemade nut brownies and rum cake.

“Paul and Winnie Harada, Meli and Randy Watanuki, Kuulei Bell coordinated the bread coming from topside,” Sister Alicia Damien said. “Gloria Marx loaned us the coolers. It was like the whole settlement pulled together.”

But without a big fuss. “They were very quiet about it,” she said.

The exhumation

On Sunday, Jan. 23, the evening before the exhumation was to officially begin, all gathered in the parish church of St. Francis for a prayer vigil. The day was also Mother Marianne’s 167th birthday. Then, as a choir of Oahu residents led by Robert Mondoy and Calvin Liu sang Mother Marianne’s supposed favorite Hawaiian song, “Makalapua,” the congregation took candles and walked into the moonlit night to the gravesite. There they paused for a moment of silent reflection.

Early the next morning, diocesan judicial vicar Father Joseph Grimaldi officially opened the exhumation process with a short ceremony and the work began.

As the archeologists worked, residents, visitors and park workers stopped by the grave to peer curiously over the edge. Others lingered from a row of white plastic chairs covered by a tarp strung under trees about 10 feet from the grave. Throughout most of each day, Sister Mary Laurence sat in vigil at the side of the grave, watching and waiting.

On every day of the process, the skies went from sunny in the morning to afternoon gray clouds threatening rain that never fell while work progressed — only afterwards. The team lined the hole with lauwa’e leaves to keep pesky flies and mosquitoes at bay.

On that first day, at about 1:40 p.m., members of the forensic team discovered the first of the remains. What they initially thought should be Mother Marianne’s feet was really her head. She was found facing due east, looking toward the motherhouse and the monument of St. Francis and the crucified Christ that previously was thought to be her headstone.

With the first discovery, Sister Grace Anne Dillenschneider of Syracuse led the onlookers in a prayer and sang the hymn of the community, “O Sing a Hymn to Francis.”

Once the forensic team had found the remains, it switched to smaller instruments to gather the delicate bones and relics.

That day, the skull and a crucifix, identified later as the one that had laid above her head on the inside of the coffin, were unearthed.

The team also found a novitiate cross that would have hung around her neck. They also discovered a rock in the middle of her chest that they think may have been placed on top of the casket before it was covered with earth.

On Tuesday, Jan. 25, the process moved much slower. The delicate and painstakingly slow work of uncovering the remains piece by piece took most of the day. The archeologists started at 7:15 a.m. and ending at about 4:30 p.m., stopping only for lunch. By evening, the crew had uncovered everything down to Mother Marianne’s kneecaps — leaving relatively little do for Wednesday.

Sava decided that her lower legs and feet, which were close to the eight-foot tall monument that stood over the grave, would have to be excavated by tunneling to avoid the danger of the monument tipping.

The anthropologist had set up a makeshift forensic lab on tables set up in the laundry room off the Bishop Home kitchen. There, each evening after dinner, he and members of his team cleaned artifacts, bone and relics and identified and analyzed the remains. Also found in the grave were nails, coffin hardware, water worn stones, crucifixes, safety pins and small pieces of black cloth and metal rosary links.

According to Sava, the work was successful and he will soon submit an official report on the results.

“We have about 99 percent of her out of the grave,” he said. “What went back in the ground was less than a handful of microscopic particles that we didn’t get.”

By Wednesday night, Sava’s work was finished. That night, several of the sisters took turns throughout the night praying in the room with the remains.

Closure and departure

On Thursday morning, out of sight of the reporters and photographers, Mother Marianne’s remains were temporarily sealed in a metal box following the church’s canonical procedures. The procedure, officially witnessed by Father Grimaldi and John Ringrose of the diocesan tribunal, started at approximately 9:50 a.m. and lasted about a half an hour.

Also witnessing the remains being placed in the container were Sister Mary Laurence, Sister Davilyn Ah Chick, Sister Alicia Damien and other sisters, as well as the members of the forensic team.

Placed in the container with the remains was a full habit of the Sisters of St. Francis made by two retired sisters in Syracuse. It was a replica of the one Mother Marianne would have worn, with a rosary, wimple and veil. The container was then closed and secured for transport to Honolulu.

“We had to make sure no unnecessary, extraneous materials were included,” Father Grimaldi said. “All has been done we feel, according to the laws of the church.”

All of the “second class” relics found in the grave, those artifacts not part of Mother Marianne’s body, were taken to Syracuse. Sister Grace Anne later told the Hawaii Catholic Herald that the relics will be catalogued, cleaned and preserved. Once Mother Marianne is beatified, she said, one or more of the second-class relics will be returned to Kalaupapa.

On Thursday, the forensic team made a quick tour around the peninsula and viewed one of Kalaupapa’s petroglyphs before leaving on the evening flight.

The next day, Friday, Jan. 28, Bishop Home was busy with renewed activity, with some sisters flying back in from Honolulu for the final blessing and leave-taking, joined by news and media crews.

When Sister Frances Therese realized that there was no Hawaiian funeral pall to drape the box containing the remains, she turned to resident Nellie McCarthy. Providentially, McCarthy’s daughter, Edith Aloneida, and a group of girls from her Kamehameha School class of 1967, had presented her mother several years before a quilt with a royal Hawaiian insignia. McCarthy gladly donated the quilt for Mother Marianne.

“I didn’t use it,” McCarthy said. “They needed one and I gave it to her. I thought, ‘Maybe that’s why I have it.’”

McCarthy said that her daughter “got chicken skin” when she was told of the donation.

“She said, I think they will be thrilled,” McCarthy said. “She said, ‘That was the purpose of why I gave it to you.’”

Paul and Winnie Harada offered their new white dura-lined Ford F-150 truck, cleaned and detailed earlier in the week by Paul and his brothers Glenn and Taka, to carry the remains to the church for the final commendation.

The choir members who were there at the start of the week took the early flight back in bearing ti leaves and leis to decorate the open-aired “hearse” for the quarter-mile procession from Bishop Home to the St. Francis Church.

At 8:30 a.m., about 15 people, including the Sisters of St. Francis, members of the tribunal and several of the patients, walked with the truck. At the church, the box was carried into the sanctuary and placed on a stand in front of the altar.

At 10 a.m., about 100 people attended the Mass celebrated by Father Grimaldi and concelebrated by Father Hendriks.

Ku’ulei Bell, a Kalaupapa resident for 54 years, attended the Mass along with about 10 other residents.

“Mother Marianne was in there with us,” she said. “I heard this little voice saying ‘Sing O Makalapua.’ After everyone left, Lucy and I sang for her. This is the last time we could say goodbye and we wanted to share that before she left.”

Olivia Breitha, a resident for more than 55 years, said that she feels that Mother Marianne she is “more here than going there.” She said that she prays that will someday meet the heroic woman in heaven.

“To me, she means that there is someone there waiting for us when we leave here,” she said.

After Mass, Padeken served lunch in McViegh Hall, next to the church. Norbert Palea, a patient who arrived in 1946, served his desserts, which by now were famous with the visitors. The luncheon was a time for reuniting and reminiscing for the sisters and the patients and Kalaupapa staff, many of whom had gone to Belgium together for the beatification of Father Damien DeVeuster in 1995.

At 12:45 everyone got in cars and closely followed the truck as it carried Mother Marianne’s remains the mile-and-a-half along the ocean to the airport. There, on the runway, about 30 people sang “Hawaii Aloha” as Mother Marianne’s remains were placed onto the Molokai cargo plane.

In Honolulu

In Honolulu, the remains were met at the airport by Jerome Andrade of Borthwick Mortuary and Sister Davilyn brought them to Borthwick Mortuary in Honolulu. There, the 48-inch by 20-inch by 12-inch high box was permanently soldered closed by Darryl Cau and placed in a modern casket.

The casket was then driven to the Franciscan convent in Manoa, the home of more than 20 sisters. There at 4 p.m. it was blessed by Sister Patricia Burkard, the Sisters of St. Francis’ general minister. After, about 25 sisters prayed a rosary and spent a few silent moments in meditation with the woman whose saintly life had inspired many of them to give their own lives to religious service.

The next night, Saturday, Jan. 29, sisters from all over Oahu and the neighbor islands gathered for a prayer vigil presided over by visiting military archdiocese auxiliary Bishop Joseph Estabrook. Each sister lit a candle and placed it on tables in front of the casket.

On Sunday morning, members of the forensic anthropology team joined Father Grimaldi, the Sisters of St. Francis and Members of the Third Order Franciscans for a private Mass with the casket at the convent.

Mother Marianne’s remains arrived at Honolulu’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace at about 2:30 p.m., on Monday, Jan. 31, for a final island farewell. The downtown church was already filling up quickly.

From 3-5 p.m., a steady flow of people, young and old, approached the casket in front of the altar to bring flowers, say a silent prayer or otherwise spend a few moments with the woman who will soon be universally honored with beatification.

Included were a host of women religious from other congregations and students from St. Francis School and St. Michael School in Waialua.

Said Chardonnay Pao, an eighth grader from St. Francis School who got to the Mass early, “I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I am really glad that I could do it. I think it is really interesting having her come down and to learn about her life. In religion class, they are teaching us a lot about her.”

Olivia Harano, brought her grandchildren and together they placed flowers on the casket.

“To me, it is important to come,” she said. “It is really a touching moment. These are my grandchildren and they really don’t have any concept about sainthood. I just wanted them to come.”

By the time the 5 p.m. Mass of Aloha began, the church was filled to capacity, with people leaning over the balcony and crowded standing near the entrances.

“Why do we as a Church go through all the trouble to have someone declared a saint?” asked diocesan administrator and celebrant Father Thomas Gross in his homily. “Why do we make such a fuss over their remains?”

“Because we need heroes of faith,” he said. “We need people who exemplify what it means to be Christian. We need saints who are human, who have bodies like we do, who have temptations like we do, and who face everyday challenges like we do. We need them. They give us hope and courage. They bring light to the gloom that is caused by sin.”

“The relics of the saints remind us of their own humanity and ours; their own ordinariness and ours; their membership in the human family and ours,” Father Gross said.

Sister Grace Anne had the final word. In her remarks at the Mass’s conclusion, she said. “On Thursday, God blessed us with which I believe is a sign — the same one he gave to Noah — a rainbow, giving us his promise of hope and blessing for the future. Let us hold that sign within our hearts as his desire for us to be at peace in his love, as we continue our journey with Mother Marianne as our guide and our inspiration.”

Back to Syracuse

Mother Marianne’s casket left for the mainland the next day, Tuesday. Landing in Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., it was driven to the New York state border where it was met by a highway patrol escort for the final leg the of journey up to Syracuse.

In Syracuse, Mother Marianne received a heroine’s welcome returning from a journey of 122 years. She was honored with ceremonies by the diocesan bishop in the city’s cathedral and at the Sisters of St. Francis motherhouse, where she now rests.

At a Mass on Feb. 3 in the motherhouse, in a talk addressed directly to Mother Marianne, Franciscan Sister Rose Raymond Wagner, quickly brought the returning superior up to date with all that has happened since she left in 1883.

“Thank you, Mother Marianne,” she concluded. “Please continue to walk with us as we reach out to God’s people, take risks for God’s Kingdom on earth and learn from your love and courage.”

“Welcome home!” she said.