Washington College Magazine
Miracle Mahoney
According to the Laws of Science, Kate Mahoney '00 shouldn't be alive today.
Diagnosed with germ cell cancer at the age of 14, she endured four months of chemotherapy that nearly killed her. On December 3, 1992, she suffered multi-system organ failure and spent the next two months in intensive care. Her liver was shot, and her kidneys shut down. In renal failure, she went from 130 pounds to 212 pounds in 12 hours, putting pressure on her lungs and brain. She was on a ventilator. She spent 25 minutes in cardiac arrest. It was a miracle she survived.
Sister Roseanne LaMancha, a Franciscan nun who works as a nurse, traveled to Rome with Kate Mahoney '00 for the beatification of Mother Marianne Cope.
The Vatican agrees—and has credited the divine intervention of Mother Marianne Cope of Molokai with saving the life of a young Irish Catholic girl. In May 2005, Kate Mahoney '00 and her parents were in Rome for the solemn mass and beatification of a sister of St. Francis who had heard and answered the prayers offered up 13 years ago.
In addition to the Franciscan nuns who accompanied the Mahoneys to Mother Marianne's beatification ceremonies in Rome, two of Kate's intensive care doctors—neither of them Catholic—also made the pilgrimage.
Russell Acevedo and Daniel Polachek both witnessed Mahoney's precipitous decline and her remarkable recovery. In the volume of medical records presented to the Vatican as proof of Mother Marianne's miracle is Dr. Acevedo's discharge report, written before his weeklong Christmas vacation. He fully expected the young patient to have perished by the time he returned to work.
"You're hard-pressed to find a doctor who uses theword 'miracle,'" says Mahoney, "but there's an abundance of medical information that is inexplicable."
The blessed Mother is now just one miracle away from sainthood.
In 1862, at the age of 24, Mother Marianne had entered the Franciscan convent in Syracuse, NY. That's Mahoney's family home—and the home of Sister Mary Laurence, Sister Rose Vincent, and other Third Order Franciscan nuns who came to the aid of the Mahoney family in crisis.
"Everyone praying for me was channeling prayers to Mother Marianne, who died in 1918 after spending most of her life working on a leper colony in Hawaii," Mahoney explains. "Sister Mary Laurence organized it all. She consulted my mom—sometimes several times throughout the day—to make sure prayers were being said for the right organ or procedure or outcome. My first memory of the nuns was in February. I still couldn't talk or move, because I had been in bed so long. But I woke to sisters praying over me. They had come in and placed one of Mother Marianne's relics on my forehead. Just having awakened, it kind of freaked me out," she recalled.
The entire experience of being "Miracle Mahoney" has been a bit unsettling for the dramatic artist. She has often felt conflicted with her personal feelings about the institutional church and the reality of living through this holy experience; she has issues with the patriarchal attitudes and the politics of the Catholic Church. Still, when the Pope greeted her saying, "In your face I see the future of the Church and Christianity," she believed him. "I immediately think, this must mean something, because he's the Pope!"
Those who know Kate perceive a new maturity.
"My illness and Mother Marianne's intervention have been a growing experience both spiritually and emotionally," Mahoney says. "I gained a great respect for the role of women in the church, especially once I grew to know the Sisters. They are the activists—the ones who take it upon themselves to change the world."
Mahoney feels a certain connection to Mother Marianne, who fearlessly challenged the status quo. She takes delight in the fact the nun once purchased a brothel and bar to build St. Joseph Hospital, where Mahoney happened to work a few years ago.
"The change for me has been in accepting the difference between spirituality and religion," Mahoney continues. "While I was with the sisters at the Vatican, I realized I wasn't among people who are different from me. Their faith is the same as my faith. What is different is our work. My politics and Church politics don't mesh at times, and for a while I let that prevent me from having a Church experience. But I think the Church can do more to open doors to young people, and I feel that I do belong there."
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