The Wise Woman . . .

 

I invite you to Google the names of Fr. Damien, Brother Joseph Dutton, Mother Marianne Cope – who were courageous care-givers. Since I am a product of Brother Dutton grade school in Beloit, WI, today’s feast of Fr. Damien touches into my past with nostalgia. There are many great links that can give information about Fr. Damien and Brother Dutton who ministered to the lepers in the late 1800’s on the island of Molokai.  However, I also found that there were Sisters skilled in health care that made a significant difference in the comfort and care of those suffering from the dreadful disease of leprosy.

Let me introduce you to Mother Marianne Cope, a Sister of St. Francis from Syracuse, NY, who took charge of a leper hospital in Honolulu, HI, (1884)  and was invited by Fr. Damien to care for the lepers on Molokai.  It is told that they found the conditions to be horrendous: “patients of all ages and both sexes slept together on bloodstained mattresses on the floor; wards crawled with bedbugs, lice, and maggots.  The stench of rotting flesh permeated the premises.”  It was Mother Marianne who went to work immediately to improve the sanitary and social conditions of the patients.  She taught her own Sisters how to nurse those afflicted. 

It is written, that after Fr. Damien died from leprosy himself, Mother Marianne took over for him.  She established a new standard of living for the young girls and women patients.  One of the Sisters writes of Mother Marianne: “She took great pride in making dresses for the girls and bought the girls hair ribbons and pretty things to wear. ‘We are lepers,’ they told her, ‘what does it matter?’  She changed all that. Doctors have said that her psychology was 50 years ahead of its time.”

Truly she was a wise woman who gave away her precious stones again and again! Her canonization will be in October of 2012.