By Connie Berry
Sun editor

The Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities held a press conference Dec. 20 announcing Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to canonize one of their own, Bl. Mother Marianne Cope. The date for the canonization in Rome has not yet been announced. Pope Benedict also announced the impending canonization of Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, a native of the Mohawk tribe who converted to Catholicism, along with five others. Bl. Kateri, from the Mohawk River Valley region in New York, will be the first Native American saint.

The Franciscans held the press conference in the chapel at the St. Anthony Motherhouse where Bl. Marianne’s reliquary is located. Sister Lorraine Wesolowski, director of communications for the sisters, welcomed all those in attendance, including Bishop Robert Cunningham and many of the sisters. The woman cured by the second miracle, Sharon Smith, was also there.

By Katherine Long
Sun associate editor

They follow him as he walks down the road. Turning, he sees Andrew and John. They ask the rabbi where he’s staying.

“Come and see,” Jesus says.

The time the two men spend with Jesus is so powerful, so transformative, it sends Andrew running to find his brother Simon. Come, he says, pulling Simon along. We found the Messiah.

“There is something about that man, so fired up by his encounter with Christ, who goes to his brother and says, ‘Come meet Christ. It has changed my life forever,’” said Father Joe O’Connor, recounting the first disciples’ encounter with Jesus in the Gospel of John. “That brother-to-brother invitation to a deeper faith is what we’re trying to create at IGNITE.”

Bl. Marianne Cope proclaimed a saint by Pope Benedict XVI

By Connie Berry
Sun editor


This year will bring the canonization of a woman whose life can be described as nothing less than extraordinary — a woman who was a leader within the Diocese of Syracuse and beyond.

On Dec. 6 the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes for Saints ruled a second miracle attributed to Bl. Marianne Cope was an unexplainable medical recovery. Then, on Dec. 19, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the Franciscan nun a saint. Now the sisters and the rest of the world are waiting for an announcement as to when her canonization in Rome will take place. Sadly, the director of Bl. Marianne’s cause for sainthood, Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, OSF, passed away just days before the Dec. 6 decision. Nearly everyone familiar with the cause would agree that Sister Mary Laurence will now finally be near the woman whose life she researched with painstaking fidelity.

Sainthood within the Catholic tradition dates back to the martyrs of the church. Holding up those whose sanctity and virtue is considered heroic has taken place since the death of Christ. In a nation as young as the U.S., only a handful of saints have been canonized. The recent announcement regarding both Bl. Marianne and Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha means Upstate New York will soon be in an elite group. Including these two women, there are only now a dozen saints who were either born in or served significantly in the U.S.