In a quiet lab at Chaminade University in Honolulu, students and experts have wrapped up a painstaking search for what are believed to be the last bone fragments of Mother Marianne Cope, the Franciscan sister honored for her work at Kalaupapa. The tiny chips, now sorted into labeled vials, will be preserved and prepared as relics to be shared with parishes across the Hawaiian islands. Students in Chaminade’s Forensic Sciences Unit teamed up with an experienced forensic anthropologist to separate bone from hard volcanic soil using sifters and microscopes, while Bishop Clarence “Larry” Silva stopped by the campus this week to see the work up close and thank the team.
How Students and Experts Recovered the Fragments
Forensic anthropologist Vincent Sava led the extraction effort, running soil collected from the grave through multiple layers of screens before students scrutinized what remained under microscopes to distinguish bone from rock and dirt. Carlos Gutiérrez Ayala, director of Chaminade’s Forensic Sciences Unit, called the project “a once‑in‑a‑lifetime opportunity” for students, who volunteered long shifts to sort the material. The university details the techniques and training used in its announcement, including how each fragment is placed into an individual vial for safekeeping and study, as described by Chaminade University.
Relics for the Islands
The Diocese plans to divide the recovered fragments so more parishes can receive relics connected to Mother Marianne and to Saint Damien, expanding opportunities for veneration and pilgrimage throughout the islands. As reported by Maui Now, the small vials are being prepared for ceremonies and display at churches across the main Hawaiian islands.
A Century of Memory
Born Barbara Koob in 1838, Mother Marianne left Syracuse and spent decades caring for people with Hansen’s disease at Kalaupapa, where she died in 1918 and was buried on the peninsula. She was beatified in 2004 and later canonized in 2011, according to a dossier on canonizations from EWTN. Her bones were exhumed in 2005 during preparations for beatification and were subsequently returned to Hawaii, with the full remains interred at the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu in 2014, per reporting by the Hawaii Catholic Herald.
What Comes Next
Sava told Chaminade that the processing work would take about a week to finish, after which the recovered material will be turned over to the Diocese to decide how it will be distributed, venerated and cared for. Chaminade notes that the systematic forensic steps involved, including screening, microscopic inspection and cataloguing, give students rare hands-on experience in skills they would typically encounter only in textbooks, and the university says it is proud to assist the Church with this work, as outlined by Chaminade University.
The Diocese has tied renewed attention to Hawaii’s missionary saints to upcoming liturgical observances and to the renovated reliquary chapel at the Cathedral, as the Church approaches its 200th anniversary in 2027, according to the Diocese of Honolulu. Church leaders say concrete plans for where the relics will be placed and how parish ceremonies will unfold will be announced in the coming months as the fragments are catalogued and readied for transfer, per Catholic Hawaii.
