St. Marianne Cope was a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse who served on Molokai, Hawaii, for 30 years, caring for victims of leprosy.

Marianne Cope was born in Heppenheim, in what was then the Grand Duchy of Hesse (modern Germany). At the age of one she moved with her family to Utica, New York. At the age of twenty-four, she entered the Sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis based in Syracuse, New York. She served as a teacher and later a principal at a school for immigrant children. She was also instrumental in starting the first two Catholic hospitals in central New York, including St. Joseph’s in Syracuse where she served as superior from 1870-1877.

IN 1883, by which time Mother Marianne was serving as Superior General of the congregation, a letter arrived from King David Kalakaua of Hawaii, asking for someone to assume direction over “our hospitals and even our schools, if it were possible… have pity… on our poor sick, help us.” Mother Marianne did not hesitate. She wrote to the King and took up his request, declaring, “I am hungry for the work…I am not afraid of any disease.”

On November 8, 1883, the SS Mariposa arrived in Honolulu harbor. Mother Marianne went to work at once, and soon King Kalakaua expressed his gratitude for the immense change for the better that Mother Marianne had brought by awarding her the medal of the Royal Order Kapiolani in 1885. In 1887 she was asked by the Hawaiian government to establish a new home for women and girls at Kalaupapa, Molokai. St. Damien of Molokai supported the decision. She and her sisters cared for St. Damien in his last days, and with his passing on April 15, 1889, Mother Marianne assumed direction over the leper settlement. She continued her labors until her passing on August 9, 1918, on Molokai.