Catholic social tips
It’s Kalaupapa Month, and as we near the 13th anniversary of St. Marianne Cope’s canonization and what would have been her 187th birthday, remembering her is right and just.
The life and legacy of Mother Marianne helped establish the presence of the Sisters of St. Francis in Hawaii since the late 1800s. She served our Lord through the corporal work of mercy, visiting the sick. She had to travel by land and sea to respond to the call of a people and culture she was unfamiliar with.
When I ponder where she summoned the courage to answer our Lord’s call, I hear the lyrics of the popular hymn, “Here I Am, Lord.”
She sailed to Hawaii, known overseas as the Sandwich Islands, in 1883, bringing her nursing expertise to answer a plea for help with caring for the sick. Catholicism had arrived (via missionaries of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary) a mere 56 years earlier. Yet she was undaunted by the challenges and buoyed by her faith to spread the Gospel, model her faith and care for the outcast and the infirm.
Before her arrival, Damien de Veuster of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary also answered the call and traveled from Belgium to Hawaii. Shortly after he landed in the islands, he was ordained a priest at the Cathedral of our Lady of Peace on May 21, 1864, and eventually traveled to Kalaupapa to minister to Hansen’s disease patients on the remote Molokai peninsula.
Father Damien also had to summon courage and strength to spread the Gospel, build houses of worship, grow the church in membership through the sacraments, and serve the sick as best he could, without the training Mother Marianne had.
They were both born in January — Father Damien on Jan. 3 and Mother Marianne on Jan. 23. In 1 Jn 5:5-13, Jesus heals a man with leprosy and restores him to his community. This holy team, both now saints, provided a community for outcasts and helped them to know the love, mercy and power of our Lord.
The countdown has begun to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Catholicism’s arrival in our islands and among our people. In 1827, the first Catholic baptisms were administered by Sacred Hearts missionaries; now, based on 2019 statistics, there are some 300,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Honolulu.
Sts. Damien and Marianne serve to inspire people to practice corporal works of mercy in visiting the sick and for the sick to practice the prayer of intercession of the saints to heal them. In fact, a woman from New York, where Mother Marianne came from, had a friend pray for her intercession for healing and placed soil from Kalaupapa on her body that reversed organ failure — leading to one of the miracles needed for Mother Marianne’s canonization.
Similarly, a woman with aggressive cancer who prayed for Father Damien’s intercession at his grave on Kalaupapa received miraculous healing.
This month is a pivotal one for prayer to these great saints. They provided a sanctuary for the outcast and the sick many years ago; let us pray today for their intercession for the outcast and the sick of our islands in this century.
Sherry Hayes-Peirce is a Catholic social media consultant based in Southern California.