Thursday 23 January 2020

# Feast # Saints

Saint Marianne Cope

Marianne Cope shortly before her departure for Hawaii (1883)


The 23rd of January is the feast day of Saint Marianne Cope. She is also known as Saint Marianne of Molokaʻi. She is the patron saint of Lepers, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS, and Hawaiʻi.

Saint Marianne Cope lived between 1838 and 1918. She was a German-born American immigrant working in a New York factor before she entered the Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Syracuse. There she helped in health care and education. The Syracuse sisters volunteered to help run a station for victims of leprosy in Hawaii, and the left in 1883 to Molokai. They opened a hospital and a girls school in Molokai and took care of the home Saint Damien of Molokai created for men and boys. She miraculously did not contract leprosy even though she worked directly with leprosy afflicted patients over the many years she was there. She was canonised in 2012.

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