Mother and I

The recipient of St. Marianne’s beatification miracle reflects on their relationship on her first visit to Hawaii

In the summer of 1992, Kate Mahoney was hooked up to life support machines in a New York hospital. She was suffering from multiple organ failure, including cardiac arrest, due to complications from cancer treatment, and was going to die.

Franciscan Sister of Syracuse Mary Laurence Hanley, the director of the canonization cause for Mother Marianne Cope, asked Mahoney’s family members, friends and fellow Franciscan Sisters to pray to Mother Marianne on behalf of Kate. Within two days, Kate’s condition inexplicably began to reverse itself.

Mahoney’s complete cure, thoroughly examined later by doctors and theologians, became the miracle which led to Mother Marianne’s beatification in Rome on May 14, 2005. The miracle was the first of two required for the Franciscan sister’s canonization in 2012.

Mahoney visited Hawaii for the first time last month. She had never before been to the place where the saintly Franciscan nun labored for the last 35 years of her life, mostly in Kalaupapa caring for Hansen’s disease patients. Mahoney came to the Islands to give a presentation at the Damien and Marianne Catholic Conference, Oct. 20-22, at the Hawaii Convention Center. While here, she was interviewed by Dominican Sister Malia Dominica Wong. Here are excerpts from that conversation.

By Sister Malia Dominica Wong, OP Hawaii Catholic Herald

SMD: What was your first reaction to the news that you would be coming to Hawaii?

KM: Obviously, I was excited because it would be so much fun. But in a deeper way, it is not exciting at all. It is like everything has led to this moment. This is what Mother and I are supposed to be doing. Her role in my life is the result that I had more life. My role in hers is posthumous, to elevate her to sainthood, which I do not think she sought. We spent a lot chapters of each other’s lives informing others. I feel the deepest peace.

SMD: On Monday (Oct. 23), you had the opportunity to visit Kalaupapa with Bishop Larry Silva’s pilgrimage. As the little plane lifted off and started going over the ocean, I saw the whitecaps and I thought of Mother Marianne on a boat.

KM: I wanted so much to think that the experience of travelling to Kalaupapa would have been so much more powerful for me. But, I don’t travel well. I took nausea medicine and had peppermint oil on my wrists and kept doing my deep breathing.

SMD: Mother Marianne didn’t travel well too! She got seasick.

KM: When we landed and went to the beach, then I instantly was transported to feeling the people landing, people being thrown, exiled, all of it. But not in a particularly overwhelming way. There is just a deep peace in a sense of making sense of everything that makes no sense at all.

SMD: Could you describe your relationship with Mother Marianne?

KM: My relationship with Mother is unlike any friendship I have ever had as we never met or got to know each other in the traditional sense, or hung out. Yet, she is my person. She accompanies me on all my road trips. I don’t have to have a conversation with her because we are that comfortable in our being quiet together. I do not need to fall down to my knees in deep devotion. I could be driving and something funny happens, and I will say out loud, “Right, Mother? That’s hilarious.” It took 25 years to develop the conversational friendship we share today.

SMD: What do you feel your mission is?

KM: I don’t expect everyone to fully understand where I am coming from, but the person I was before and after I got sick is the same person. The notion of valuing and honoring all people, and welcoming all beyond religious belief and labelling is important. My mission is to make people know that they matter as Mother Marianne did. It is to take this very extraordinary woman who is accessible to all people, to all the world, and to let them know that we are, or will be at some point in life, all patients and caregivers. Thus, each one of us really needs to care for each other.