Deepertruth: Stand In The Gap With Us And Saint Marianne Cope

Stand In The Gap With Us And Saint Marianne Cope 1/23/2024

St. Marianne Cope was born Barbara Koob on Jan. 23, 1838, in Hessen, West Germany. A year after she was born, the family immigrated to Utica, N.Y., where the surname Koob became Cope. Barbara became a U.S. citizen when her father was naturalized.

J.F. Bowler, a leading Catholic laywoman at the time, who said Mother Marianne “risked her own life … faced everything with unflinching courage and smiled sweetly throughout it all. … She was a heroine in her life; she is a martyr in death.”

Though leprosy scared off most people in 19th-century Hawaii, that disease sparked great generosity in the woman who came to be known as Mother Marianne of Molokai. Her courage helped tremendously to improve the lives of its victims in Hawaii, a territory annexed to the United States during her lifetime (1898).

Mother Marianne’s generosity and courage were celebrated at her May 14, 2005, beatification in Rome. She was a woman who spoke “the language of truth and love” to the world, said Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. Cardinal Martins, who presided at the beatification Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, called her life “a wonderful work of divine grace.” Speaking of her special love for persons suffering from leprosy, he said, “She saw in them the suffering face of Jesus. Like the Good Samaritan, she became their mother.”

Her father died in 1862, and this along with her siblings maturity, permitted her to leave the factory to pursue a religious life. She became a novitiate of the Sisters of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis based in Syracuse, New York. She took the name Marianne when she completed her formation.