St. Francis students hold 179th birthday party for St. Marianne

St. Francis School held a 179th birthday party for Hawaii's second saint on Tuesday in front of Marianne Hall with songs, prayer, lei, ice cream and even jazz music.

Mother Marianne Cope, who was canonized in 2012, was the inspiration for the founding of the Manoa Catholic school in 1924, six years after her death in Kalaupapa.

"Without Mother Marianne there would be no St. Francis School," said Sister Joan of Arc Souza the 26th-year head of school.
"We do this every year and we celebrate with ice cream with the children as you would at any birthday party."

Sister Joan and her students gathered in front of the statue of Cope on the grounds of the elementary school. A school choir that included members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints performed the Mormon hymn, "Spirit of God."

Marianne Cope became a saint in October 2012, three years after Damien De Veuster became Hawaii's first saint.

Cope blazed a path in health care hygiene, opening and operating two general hospitals in New York. At the time hospitals had a high mortality rate because little attention was paid to basic modern practices like hand-washing and cleaning. Cope imposed standards for hospital cleanliness.

After traveling to Hawaii she opened the first general hospital on Maui, opened an orphanage in Honolulu for orphans of Hansen's Disease patients, and cleaned up a badly overcrowded hospital in the city. In 1887 when a new Hawaiian government resumed banishing leprosy patients to Molokai, Cope moved there to spend the rest of her life.

She is credited with bringing much higher standards of hygiene to Kalaupapa after the death of St. Damien.

Sister Joan said that Cope's efforts were so effective that no nun from the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities has ever died of Hansen's Disease. Cope died at 80 of natural causes.