Mother Marianne Cope Canonization On Oct. 21

HONOLULU (AP) - The Vatican has announced a nun who spent decades caring for patients segregated on the Kalaupapa leprosy colony on Molokai will be canonized a saint later this year.

Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday that Mother Marianne Cope will be made a saint during a canonization ceremony on Oct. 21.

Church officials say beginning in the 1880s, Cope spent more than 30 years caring for patients suffering from leprosy, or Hansen's Disease, a bacterial infection that causes severe and disfiguring damage to skin, eyes and nerves.

She was known for demanding money from the government to help the leprosy patients, and is credited with having a school built and teaching women and girls to sew and garden.

Cope died at the colony of natural causes in 1918.

The announcement that Cope will be made a U.S. saint came at the end of a ceremony Saturday to make 22 new cardinals.