Tag: Saints

After nearly 50 religious orders refused Hawaiian King Kalakaua’s invitation to care for the victims of leprosy in his kingdom, St. Marianne Cope said “yes.” The Mother Provincial of the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse, New York, responded wholeheartedly to the request, saying, “I am hungry for the work, and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen ones, whose privilege it will be to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders. … I am not afraid of any disease, hence, it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned ‘lepers.’”

The family of Barbara Koob — St. Marianne’s birth name — emigrated from Germany for America the year after her birth in 1838, and the immigrant family’s name became Cope. Although she felt called to religious life, Cope began factory work after eighth grade to help her family’s finances when her father became ill. When her father died in 1862, Cope could finally profess vows with the Franciscan Sisters in Syracuse. The newly named Sister Marianne soon began service in German immigrant schools. Her leadership skills were apparent early on, which led her to establishing hospitals in central New York State and a tenure as administrator of St. Joseph Hospital in Syracuse. Cope’s intelligence and interpersonal abilities were apparent, and all who knew her were aware that God was her sole inspiration. She became provincial in 1877.

Already secure in her calling, God called Cope to an even more sacrificial life when she responded favorably to King Kalakaua’s request. It might seem astounding that Cope responded with such ease to something she never imagined in her ministry. However, it’s easily understandable when one is more acquainted with her willingness to serve the Lord. At her beatification in 2005, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins recalled Cope’s dependence on God’s providence, saying, “She left everything and abandoned herself completely to the will of God, to the call of the Church and to the demands of her new brothers and sisters. She put her own health and life at risk.”

Cope and six Franciscan sisters arrived in Hawaii in 1883 and operated hospitals and schools among the leper community. Initially overseeing a hospital for the victims of the disease in Oahu, she later established a home to care for children of leper victims. There, Cope and her sisters cared for the children with a mother’s love. Known for her undying optimism and trust in God’s providence, Cope taught her sisters about their role among the lepers, saying they were “to make life as pleasant and as comfortable as possible for those of our fellow creatures whom God has chosen to afflict with this terrible disease.”

Cope carried on her motherly love of the lepers when she opened a home for women and girls on the island of Molokai. This was a further sacrifice because she knew going to the leper’s island-prison meant essentially she was isolated from the outside world forever. While on Molokai, she developed a close relationship with St. Jozef Damien De Veuster after he was diagnosed with leprosy. Cope lovingly took care of this “apostle to the lepers” in his final days and carried on much of his work among the men’s section of the leper colony after his 1889 death. In 1895, she secured religious brothers to staff it.

Cope led the sisters in the Hawaiian missions until her health began to decline after a life of tireless work as an embodiment of the Good Samaritan. Miraculously, however, she never suffered from leprosy. An 80-year-old Cope died on Molokai on Aug. 9, 1918, originally buried on the island. Never returning to her Syracuse motherhouse in her lifetime, Cope’s relics arrived in Syracuse in 2005 and stayed there until enshrinement in the Honolulu cathedral in 2014. Cope was canonized in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI, who said she, “showed the highest love, courage and enthusiasm.”

Her feast day is Jan. 23.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

Imagine the suffering of a 29-year-old American widow returning home from Italy, having just buried her husband. Underneath the pain, she couldn’t have guessed this, amazingly, was an integral part of God’s plan. Unknown to her, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was on the path to becoming the first canonized saint born on American soil.

The daughter of a physician, born in New York City in 1774, 3-year-old Elizabeth was acquainted with suffering early with her mother’s death. She married a wealthy importer, William Seton, in 1794, and together they had five children. Stress from the bankruptcy of his business in 1802 worsened William Seton’s existing tuberculosis, and doctors prescribed the Italian climate. Elizabeth didn’t leave his side until his death in an Italian quarantine two days after Christmas in 1803. The couple originally planned to stay with his business partners in Italy, and the young widow enjoyed their hospitality until she could return to America. The Filicchi family home had a private chapel, and there Elizabeth had her first experience of Catholicism. Her life was forever changed.

Fascinated by the Church’s liturgy and the Real Presence, the committed Protestant who went to Italy would soon return to America with a Catholic heart.

Antonio Filicchi helped Seton informally begin her study of the Faith on the voyage to New York.

Seton’s conversion to Catholicism brought about many hardships. Hostility from her family was just the beginning of her sufferings in an anti-Catholic New York City. Seton made the Profession of Faith and received her first holy Communion in March 1805 at St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street, the city’s oldest parish. As a victim of prejudice, Seton had trouble finding stable work to provide for her family, and she wrestled about what to do.

God gave the answer when Seton was invited to Maryland by Sulpician Father William DuBourg, who interestingly, as bishop of the Louisiana Territory, worked with St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. In the Catholic-friendly state of Maryland, Seton would establish a school and start a religious order. First teaching in Baltimore for a year, Seton pronounced religious vows in 1809 in the presence America’s first bishop, John Carroll. He gave the foundress of the first religious order established in the United States the title “Mother Seton.” The Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s lived the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul’s Daughters of Charity with a few alterations from Carroll to provide for a mother with children to enter the new order.

Establishing a free school for poor girls near Emmitsburg, Maryland, proved to be a daunting, but not impossible task for Mother Seton. With guidance and assistance from Sulpician Father Jean Dubois — the future bishop of New York who ordained St. John Neumann — Seton and her sisters opened St. Joseph’s Free School in 1810, and for this she is remembered as the mother of Catholic education in the United States.

Seton’s trust in God was undying, although it was tested in her final years on the rough Maryland frontier, especially when two daughters died of tuberculosis by 1816. Persevering in the Faith to the end, Seton exhorted those near her deathbed, “Be children of the Church.” She died of tuberculosis at the age of 46 on Jan. 4, 1821. Seton’s spiritual director, Sulpician Father Simon Bruté, himself a candidate for sainthood, memorialized her saying, “O, such a mother! Such faith and love! Such a true spirit of prayer, of true humility, of true self-denial in all, of true charity to all!”

Seton’s life as a loving wife and mother, a faithful teacher and a holy consecrated woman leaves a lasting example. Blessed Pope Paul VI dispensed with the then-necessary fourth miracle required for sainthood and canonized her in the Holy Year of 1975, exhorting Americans, “Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage.”

Her feast day is January 4.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

When a young Bohemian immigrant arrived in New York City on a rainy June day in 1836 his hopes for priesthood were uncertain. Due to an ordination moratorium imposed by his homeland’s government, St. John Neumann could not be ordained at home. Forsaking the comforts of home and family, desiring only his life’s oblation in love and service, Neumann chose to go to America. He read accounts of such storied missionaries as Frederic Baraga — a current candidate for sainthood — and he hoped to follow in their footsteps. Little did the young seminarian know when he set foot on American soil that the path God had in store would result in his canonization as the country’s first male saint.

Born in modern-day Czech Republic in 1811, Neumann grew up in a devout Catholic home, and he had many siblings called to religious vocations.

New York’s bishop John Dubois — the one-time advisor to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton — was impressed quickly by Neumann’s intellect and missionary zeal, ordaining him a priest within his first month in America. Dubois assigned him to regions near Buffalo, New York. While there, Neumann expressed how he faced many hardships and bouts with loneliness. Outwardly, he seemed successful, having established many parishes between Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania. But Neumann knew he needed a change. With the help of several priest-advisers, Neumann recognized his need for the support of a religious community to settle his troubled spirit, and he set out for the Redemptorist novitiate in Pittsburgh in 1840.

Neumann proved himself to be a competent and talented administrator, responsible for finishing the building project at St. Philomena’s Church in Pittsburgh, where he ministered alongside a fellow Redemptorist, Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos. Neumann then went on to pastor several other churches, mostly in Maryland. A surprise came when Neumann was appointed the American provincial of his order in 1847, requiring a move to Baltimore, where he became a naturalized American citizen the following year.

Administration of his order brought heavy burdens to Neumann since Redemptorists in America at the time tended to work independently. Neumann was chosen to provide unity among his brothers, and proved to be successful. In Baltimore, he also served as pastor of his order’s St. Alphonsus Church and provided much needed support to many religious orders of women in the area. Neumann’s talents as an administrator would change directions in his life yet again in 1852, when he was named fourth Bishop of Philadelphia by Blessed Pope Pius IX. He was ordained a bishop in Baltimore on his 41st birthday.

Neumann received an overwhelming welcome in his new diocese, and he was immediately recognized as a fatherly, kindly and even saintly pastor. His legacy as bishop includes the establishment of the first American diocesan schools system, the founding of religious orders, starting the Forty Hours Eucharistic devotion, and care for the poor and the city’s booming European immigrants. Neumann led his flock courageously amid the rampant anti-Catholicism and anti-immigration prejudices of the Know-Nothing party.

Neumann excelled in the virtues, most notably humility, without which he said “other virtues could be neither genuine nor permanent.” Neumann desired sanctity, praying at his first Mass, “Dearest God, give me holiness!” No matter what obstacles presented themselves in his life, Neumann responded with a total “yes” to God.

A life of love and service came to a sudden end when, on Jan. 5, 1860, at age 48, Neumann collapsed from a stroke on a Philadelphia street. In 1977, when Neumann became the first (and to date, only) American bishop to be canonized, Pope Paul VI said that for Neumann to accomplish his great works, “love was necessary. And love meant giving; love meant effort; love meant sacrifice. And in his sacrifice, Bishop Neumann’s service was complete.”

His feast day is January 5.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.