For three weeks, Sister Mary Laurence Hanley and Sister Grace Anne Dillenschneider walked the mountain paths of Hawaii, part of their quest to bring the body of Mother Marianne Cope home to Syracuse.

Their four-nun group traveled to the isolated Kaluapapa peninsula, where Mother Marianne devoted the final 35 years of her life to help those who had been exiled to the island of Molakai by leprosy. She grew up in Central New York before leaving for ministry in Hawaii, and is now a candidate for Roman Catholic sainthood. Her body was exhumed Jan. 27 for return to Syracuse as part of this candidacy.

At the end of her pilgrimage to Hawaii, Sister Mary Laurence, the director of the canonization and chief historian, put Mother Marianne’s remains into the metal box that would carry her body back to the east coast. She said one of the nuns pointed out a rare double rainbow over Mother Marianne’s gravesite, an affirmation to the years of hard work that had led to that point.

‘It was like a little bit of heaven,’ she said.

Mother Marianne’s exhumation and return are steps on the long road to sainthood that began over 30 years ago, when Sister Mary Laurence began work on Mother Marianne’s official biography.

Mother Marianne has already met several of the requirements for sainthood – a biography has been written about her, and the Vatican must attribute one miracle to her. She can then be beatified, after which another miracle must be attributed to her.

Mother Marianne, who grew up in Utica, was born Barbara Koob on Jan. 23, 1838, in West Germany. She joined the Sisters of St. Francis in November 1862, when she took the name Marianne.

Mother Marianne helped found several hospitals, including Syracuse’s St. Joseph’s Medical Center. In the 1870s, she helped bring the College of Physicians and Surgeons from Geneva to a young Syracuse University. This college is now known as the State University of New York Upstate Medical University.

Mother Marianne left Syracuse in 1883 for the island of Molokai, where she was asked to work with the sick at Kaluapapa. The peninsula was Hawaii’s colony for those suffering from leprosy, a flesh-eating disease.

‘She took care of the AIDS patients of her day, the people who were almost put on the refuse heap of life,’ said the Most Rev. James Moynihan, bishop of the Diocese of Syracuse.

Despite the inherent risk of contracting the disease, Mother Marianne willingly took the assignment.

‘I am hungry for the work … I am not afraid of any disease, hence it will be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned ‘leper,” she wrote in 1883.

Mother Marianne tended not just to the residents’ physical needs, but also their spiritual and social needs. She planned activities for the children, some whom came to the island at only five years old. She worked in the outdoors, doing her best to make the island hospitable.

‘There wasn’t a tree or shrub there when Mother Marianne got there. They told her nothing would grow. She had her friends send in hundreds of trees from Honolulu and New York,’ Sister Mary Laurence said.

The trees still stood when Sisters Mary Laurence and Grace Anne traveled to Hawaii last month.

Mother Marianne remained on the island until 1918, when she died of natural causes. The Molokai nuns and patients began collecting her letters and personal stories in anticipation of her possible canonization right after her death, Sister Grace Anne said.

‘It was great foresight,’ Sister Grace Anne said. ‘They felt this day would come.’

Many hope the cause for canonization and Sister Mary Laurence’s biography of Mother Marianne, entitled ‘Song of Pilgrimage and Exile,’ published in 1983, have the same effect on much-needed vocations today.

‘It’s an incentive for people to think about the ministry and the purpose of our lives,’ said the Rev. Richard Dellos, the pastor at St. Joseph and St. Patrick parish, where Mother Marianne grew up and where a group of parishioners has been meeting every Wednesday morning for the last 17 years to pray for her cause.

Mother Marianne’s first miracle is currently in advanced stages of consideration by a Vatican tribunal, where ‘it passed unanimously the scrutiny of both medical and spiritual authority,’ Sister Mary Laurence said.

Thirteen years ago, a young woman in Syracuse was suffering from multiple organ failure, and doctors fully anticipated her death. A visiting nun touched the woman with a relic, an object touched or used by Mother Marianne. That night, her family, friends and the sisters prayed to Mother Marianne for the woman’s recovery, Sister Mary Laurence said. That week, her organs started to function again.

The sisters’ efforts for Mother Marianne’s cause climaxed on Jan. 24 when they saw Mother Marianne’s body for the first time.

‘When they first uncovered her coffin and the beginning of her remains, we looked down and knew we were looking at Mother Marianne,’ Sister Grace Anne said. ‘It was great awe and great wonder. It was a very spiritual moment. I really feel like we were communicating with Mother Marianne.’

Here in Syracuse, it is Mother Marianne’s humanness that appeals to the faithful. She was a real woman from Utica; she worked in a factory to support her family.

‘It’s easier to understand a saint, sometimes, more than as God as a whole,’ said Julia Rocchi, president of the Pastoral Council at SU’s Alibrandi Catholic Center. ‘It’s something people can relate to more.’

Saints act as intercessors, or intermediaries that pass on the prayers of the faithful to God. They remain a part of the life of the Church, even in death, through the interconnectedness of the community, said the Rev. Tim Mulligan, chaplain of the Alibrandi Center and a Franciscan friar.

Pope John Paul II has been receptive to Mother Marianne’s cause, Bishop Moynihan said. Mother Marianne’s cause is advancing quickly through the various stages and requirements of the Church.

Until her beatification, those who want to pray to Mother Marianne can attend a mass at Assumption Church on North Salina Street on Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. Mother Marianne’s remains will be at the sisters’ convent off Court Street, where visitors can view her casket on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. throughout February.

In the museum dedicated to Mother Marianne, there is a picture of a young nun standing next to a plane; the name ‘Mother Marianne’ painted across its side. The image is appropriate, invoking both Mother Marianne’s own journey and the journey to bring her home.

The emotions of that trip still linger, as they always will, with Sister Mary Laurence.

‘There was a feeling of peace,’ she said. ‘There’s no capturing those feelings in words. It’s something you hope for in your heart.’

Published on February 10, 2005 at 12:00 pm