Mother Marianne Cope: Early Advocate for Social Justice and Human Rights

At 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 6, Anwei S. Law, Coordinator, IDEA Center for the Voices of Humanity, will speak at the Seneca Falls Library on the life work of Mother Marianne Cope.

Mother Marianne Cope, raised in Central New York, rose from a factory worker to help found two of the first 50 hospitals in the United States, St. Elizabeth's in Utica and St. Joseph's in Syracuse. Mother Marianne's efforts with regard to ensuring each individual's right to health care reached from the East Coast of the United States to what was at that time, the foreign kingdom of Hawaii. From 1884 until her death in 1918, Mother Marianne worked to ensure a "quality of life spirit" in those who had leprosy, promoting their inherent dignity and advocating for their most basic human rights.

Mother Marianne's innate sense of justice, her outstanding heroic virtues and her life of charity led to her beatification on May 14, 2005, at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Her history as a determined, dedicated woman has led her to be among the ten outstanding American women who are being inducted on Oct. 8, 2005, into the Class of 2005 at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls.

It is in between these two events that the Seneca Falls Library has invited Anwei Skinsnes Law to come and speak about Mother Cope.

From her early day as a nurse and administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse to her final days at Kalaupapa, Mother Marianne insisted on the rights and inherent dignity of those who had been marginalized by society. She made pioneering efforts in promoting the right of each individual to health care, patients' rights, the rights of women and children to education, privacy and freedom from abuse, and the right of each individual to live and die with dignity, irrespective of social status, race or religion.

Anwei Skinsnes Law has studied Mother Marianne's life since her field work for her Masters in Public Health included a comprehensive study on Compliance in Leprosy with the Communicable Disease Division of the Hawaii State Department of Health more than 20 years ago. She has been a researcher, writer, historian and lecturer on the subject ever since.

This talk is sponsored, in part, by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Century 21 Malone-Rivers and the Seneca Falls Saving Bank. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.