A FRIEND OF LEPERS

New Zealand Tablet, 24 October 1918, Page 32

A FRIEND OF LEPERS

Mother Marianne is dead. The “kindly, gentle lady” of whom Robert Louis Stevenson spoke so tenderly in his Letters , passed away recently at the leper colony of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands, where she had spent 35 years of her life in ministering to the unfortunate victims of a loathsome disease. She was born in Germany 82 years agoßarbara Kopp, the daughter of Peter and Barbara Kopp. She came to America (says an exchange) with her parents as a child, and when she was 26 years old she entered the Sisterhood of the Third Order of St. Francis. It was in 1883 that Father Leonore, follower and co-laborer of Father Damien, came to this country from the Hawaiian Islands, asking for Sisters to volunteer for service in the leper colony at Molokai. „ Mother Marianne gladly accepted the mission, feeling that it was an opportunity to render incomparable service. She gave up the high position of superior in her Order and, together with five other nuns, left Syracuse in October, 1883, to sacrifice the rest of her life to the outcast Ippera. She was the last of the little band to die. Robert Louis Stevenson in his Letters tells of the colony and speaks of Mother Marianne Sister Marianne, as she was then.