Today we honor Saint Marianne Cope, a German-born American Religious Sister whose life was marked by extraordinary courage and compassion. A member of the Sisters of St. Francis of Syracuse, she helped found St. Joseph’s Hospital in New York and, in 1883, led fellow sisters to Molokaʻi, in Hawaii, to care for those suffering from leprosy and to strengthen the islands’ medical infrastructure. Despite years of direct contact, she never contracted the disease. Beatified and canonized by Pope Benedi

SAINT OF THE DAY Saint Marianne Cope, Virgin 1838–1918 January 23—Optional Memorial USA Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of lepers, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS, Hawaii. An immigrant learns generosity in her large family, and practices it her whole life Today’s saint was a model female Franciscan who emulated Saint Francis’ heroic example of personally caring for those outcasts of all outcasts—lepers. Saints are not born, of course; they are made. And Saint Marianne Cope came from a specifi