Monday, December 26, 2011

Babara Koob - Saint Marianne Cope


Barbara Koob moved from Utica to Syracuse in the summer of 1862, when she was 24, to enter the convent of the Sisters of St. Francis.


Twenty-one years later, the woman the world now knows as Saint Marianne Cope left Syracuse to work as a missionary among the lepers in Hawaii. Even during her lifetime, many considered her a saint for her bravery, compassion and leadership. She spent 35 years ministering to hundreds of people so feared that the Kingdom of Hawaii banished them to a remote, desolate peninsula of Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai.

In a Christmas present, the Sisters of St. Francis learned Monday that Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed Mother Marianne a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, and she will be canonized next year. The designation came after an intense, detailed process of nearly 40 years. The Franciscan sisters gathered thousands of pages of research about their heroine, toured the places she lived and worked and collected information about possible miracles, including two the Vatican ultimately ruled were healings of people whose recovery doctors could not explain.

The long journey to sainthood began with a modest life in Central New York. From 1862 to 1883, the future saint walked the streets of Syracuse in her roles as Franciscan leader and administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital. She was among the Franciscan sisters who opened the 15-bed hospital in 1869 in a former dance hall and saloon on Prospect Hill.

Great set of links at the bottom of the article.

No comments: