Hawaiian saint goes back to N.Y.

In preparation for her beatification, the remains of Mother Marianne Cope have been removed from her resting place in a settlement for leprosy patients in Kalaupapa, Hawaii, where she served for nearly 30 years. That community was featured in a photo story in the June 2000 issue of U.S. CATHOLIC. Many of the settlement's remaining patients are upset by the removal of the woman they consider their local saint.

"It is very hurtful to us because she loved it here and loved the patients," Bernard Punikaia, 74, told The New York Times.

Cope was a Franciscan missionary from Syracuse, New York, where her remains will be permanently buried. The Syracuse Franciscans told the Times they moved the grave due to "concerns about what might happen to [it] once there was no longer a convent on the island." More than 8,000 victims of leprosy are buried there, but the official registry of current patients lists only 39, the youngest of whom is 63.

Vatican rules require the body of someone considered for beatification to be exhumed to confirm the person's identity, but the decision to move Cope was made by the Franciscans. The small peninsula on the island of Molokai is by design remote and hard to access, as in years past the site was used to forcibly sequester leprosy sufferers from the rest of the population.

In 1936 a similar controversy took place when the remains of the famed Blessed Father Damien de Veuster, a victim of leprosy himself, were removed from Kalaupapa and reinterred in his home country of Belgium.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, Italy suggested in the Italian newspaper Il Secolo XIX that the Vatican should lift the miracle requirement for canonizations in the future. Currently before being beatified a person must be credited with at least one miracle, unless he or she was a martyr. Then, to go on to be canonized, all candidates must have at least one more miracle attributed to them.