By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
St. Marianne’s Knight Grand Cross from the Order of Kamehameha I(Courtesy photo)
An honor out of Hawaii’s royal past to Molokai’s St. Marianne Cope will be handed over to Bishop Larry Silva and the Diocese of Honolulu for display and safekeeping inside the saint’s reliquary in the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace.
On Jan. 23, during St. Marianne’s feast day Mass in the cathedral, Sister William Marie Eleniki, regional minister of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, will give Bishop Silva the Franciscan saint’s Knights Grand Cross she received posthumously a year ago from the Order of Kamehameha I.
The Order of Kamehameha I is an order of knighthood founded in 1865 by decree of King Kamehameha V and reactivated in 2016.
Among its purposes, said its chancellor pro tem James Wong, is “to confer honorary distinctions upon Hawaii citizens and foreigners who have rendered important services to our dynasty and people,” and to “cultivate and develop among Hawaii citizens the feeling of honor and loyalty to our dynasties and its institutions.”
St. Marianne is the third notable Catholic to receive this Hawaii honor.
In 1881, King Kalakaua awarded the Knights Grand Cross to the Hawaii Catholic mission’s second apostolic vicar, Bishop Louis Maigret, and the Knights Commander, a lesser honor, to then Father Damien de Veuster.
Royal Order of Kapiolani, like the one Mother Marianne received. (Courtesy photo)
St. Damien was awarded the Knights Grand Cross — a white enamel Maltese cross mounted on a gold sunburst with an ornate “K” in the center — posthumously in 2019.
Wong presented St. Marianne’s medal to the superior of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, Sister Barbara Jean Donovan, and Sister of St. Francis Alicia Damien Lau in Honolulu on Jan. 18, 2020.
“On behalf of the legacy of Kamehameha V and the Order of Kamehameha I, it is an honor and pleasure to award the Knights Grand Cross to St. Marianne Cope, the beloved mother of outcasts, who cared for Hawaii’s leprosy patients for 35 years, the final 30 years in Kalaupapa, Molokai,” Wong said in a statement at the time.
During her lifetime, in 1885 in Honolulu, Mother Marianne was also decorated with the Royal Order of Kapiolani by King Kalakaua.
This honor was given quietly by the king himself at the Nov. 9, 1885, dedication of Kapiolani Home, the Kakaako residence for the daughters of Hansen’s disease patients that Mother Marianne would administer. A booklet chronicling the event described the award as “established by His Majesty chiefly to reward acts of benevolence on behalf of his people.”
