PUNSTER’S DAY Day 312 of 2007 53 days left in this year

HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY – Olu‘olu: Kind
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “Open out the chest that it may be spacious.”
(Be gernous and kind to all.)

NOVEMBER 8, 1883: Mother Marianne Cope arrives on Molokai with three Franciscan nuns to begin their work at the Kaluapapa Leper Colony, as it was called back then.

Ten years earlier, Father Damien had arrived, and began the work to turn a scrabble of a town, surrounded by high cliffs and set away from the leering eyes of the public, into a decent, private and even happy place for people who suffered from Hansen’s disease.

When Mother Cope arrived, she found a small, spartan town with patients’ basic needs cared for. She set about enlivening the village. According to Mother Cope’s nurse, who tended the nun in her later years, “She revolutionized life on Molokai, brought cleanliness, pride and fun to the colony. People on Molokai laugh now—like other people in the world, laugh at the same things, the same dilemmas and jokes.”

“It was Mother Marianne who bought the girls hair ribbons and pretty things to wear, dresses and scarves. Women keep their cottages and their rooms in the big communal houses neatly, pride fully. There are snowy bedspreads, pictures on the walls. They set their tables at meal time with taste, Mother Marianne brought that about.”

In 1889, when Father Damien died of leprosy, Mother Cope became a leader of the settlement, and worked there until her death in 1918, having spent 35 years on the peninsula. The day she died, she demanded to be wheeled down to the common room, where she ate a meal with the other nuns and, it is said, cracked more jokes than anyone else. She died that night.

On May 14, 2005, Mother Cope was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church. This is the first step on the path to sainthood. Now the Vatican waits for word about miracles which may have been done in Mother Cope’s name.

The church investigates each claim for validity, so it says. The Catholic rule book says three miracles must be proven for a beatified person to be elevated to sainthood, though in modern times this rule has been severely bent. It was, in fact, the sainthood of Father Damien that moved the church away from this requirement: Saint Damien has just one miracle ascribed to him. Mother Cope still awaits hers.

[tags]molokai,mother cope, father damien, leper colony, hawaii[/tags]