The Hawaiian Islands were in independent kingdom when Mother Marianne Cope, the Provincial of the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, New York, was asked in 1883 to send some of her Sister to care for the Islands’ sickly poor, especially the victims of Hansen’s disease. Her answer, “I desire to accept this work in the name of the great St. Francis.” That the same year, she personally led the first group of the six Sisters to Hawai’i.