St. Marianne Cope

Their story

Barbara Koob, later Cope, was born on January 23, 1838, in Heppenheim, Germany. When she was a baby her family moved to Utica, New York. She felt called to religious life as a girl, but when her father became ill she went to work in a factory to support the family. After his death, at the age of 24, she entered the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse and took the name Marianne. Sister Marianne taught school and served as a principal, and then helped open two of the first hospitals in central New York. She was a gifted administrator who insisted that every patient be treated with respect, whatever their background. In 1883, as leader of her community, she received a letter from Hawaii asking for sisters to care for people with leprosy, now called Hansen's disease. More than fifty religious communities had already said no. Mother Marianne said yes, and she went herself with six sisters. In Hawaii she managed a hospital for people with leprosy and opened a home for the daughters of patients. In 1888 she moved to the settlement at Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, where people with the disease were sent to live in isolation. There she cared for St. Damien of Molokai in the last months of his life and took over his work after his death in 1889. She brought cleanliness, order, beauty and dignity to the settlement. She never caught the disease. She died at Kalaupapa on August 9, 1918, and Pope Benedict XVI canonized her in 2012.