Frances Xavier Cabrini ( [or ] ; born Maria Francesca Cabrini; 15 July 1850 – 22 December 1917), also known as Mother Cabrini, was a prominent Italian-American religious sister in the Catholic Church. She was the first American to be recognized by the Catholic Church as a Saint.

Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSG), a religious institute that today provides education, health care, and other services to the poor in 15 nations. During her lifetime, Cabrini established 67 schools, orphanages and other social service institutions in Italy, the United States and other nations. She became a revered and influential figure in the Catholic hierarchy in the United States and Rome.

Born in Italy, Cabrini migrated to the United States in 1887. Despite anti-Italian prejudice and opposition within the Catholic Church in America, she successfully established charitable institutions in New York City for poor Italian immigrants. She later extended these efforts to Italian immigrant populations across the United States. Catholic leaders were soon calling on her to create missions in Latin America and Europe.

Cabrini became a naturalized American citizen in 1909. After her death in 1917, her order started a campaign for her sainthood. The Vatican beatified Cabrini in 1938 and canonized her a saint in 1946. The Vatican named her as the patron saint of immigrants in 1950.

Life in Italy

Early years

Maria Francesca Cabrini was born on 15 July 1850, in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, then part of the Austrian Empire. She was the youngest of the 13 children of farmer Agostino Cabrini and his wife Stella Oldini. Only four of her siblings survived beyond adolescence. On one occasion, she fell into the river and was swept downstream. Her rescuers found her on a riverbank. Cabrini attributed her rescue to divine intervention.

thumb|287x287px|Arluno, Italy, where Cabrini attended school (2014)

Cabrini's older sister Rosa was a teacher, which influenced her to follow the same career path. She later worked for three more years as a substitute teacher at a school in Castiraga Vidardo in Lombardy.

After Cabrini's parents died in 1870, she applied for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno. However, the sisters rejected Cabrini because they believed her health wasn't strong enough. In 1872, while working with the sick during a smallpox outbreak, she contracted the disease and was rejected by the Canossian Sisters of Crema, again for health reasons.

Cabrini bought a former Franciscan convent in Codogno. With several of the former Providence sisters, Cabrini in November 1880 founded the Institute of the Salesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC). At the Codogno convent, the MSC sisters took in orphans and foundlings, opened a day school, started classes in needlework, and sold their fine embroidery.

Papal recognition

thumb|right|250px|Mother Cabrini meets Pope [[Leo XIII (1887). Fresco by Luigi Arzuffi, at the Our Lady of the Assumption Church, Caselle Landi, Glogowski]]

In September 1887, Cabrini went to Rome to meet Leo XIII. She asked him for permission to set up a convent in Rome, which he readily gave. She also asked for permission to send missions to Asia. However, Leo XIII was thinking of a different destination. When they disembarked from the ship, the Scalabrinians were not there. Furthermore, they had failed to set up accommodations for them. The sisters spent their first night in the United States in a decrepit rooming house with bed bugs in the mattresses, forcing them to sleep on chairs.

Cabrini and the MSC sisters started knocking on tenement doors in Little Italy in Manhattan. At that time, many Italian immigrants in New York were suspicious of the institutional Catholic Church, sentiments fostered by the government of the newly unified Italy. Their loyalties lay more with their personal saints. In addition, as most of the immigrants came from Sicily, Calabria and other southern regions, they were initially suspicious of the MSC sisters, who all originated from Lombardy in Northern Italy.

Cabrini once wrote:<blockquote>“What we as women cannot do on a large scale to help solve grave social ills is being done in our small sphere of influence in every state and city where we have opened houses. In them we shelter and care for orphans, the sick and the poor.”</blockquote>Although she moved the MSC order to West Park, Cabrini continued to work in New York City. The Scalabrinians thwarted her efforts to build a school there. However, she joined with them in 1890 to build the first hospital in the city for Italians. She brought ten MSC sisters from Italy to staff the hospital, which opened in 1891.

Other missions

thumb|Lynching of 11 Italian immigrants In New Orleans, Louisiana (1891)|350x350px

As Cabrini's reputation grew, she started receiving requests for help on Catholic projects outside New York for both Italian and non-Italian Catholics. She sailed in 1891 to Nicaragua to open a religious house. While there, she traveled by boat into a remote area to visit a settlement of Miskito people. Arriving in Chile, she traveled by mule over the Andes Mountains to found schools in Brazil and Argentina. She also went to Grenada to start a school.

The final destination in her first mission trip was New Orleans in 1892, where she set up another school for Italians. The area was a hotbed of anti-Catholic sentiment, combined with racial discrimination against immigrants from Southern Italy, who locals believed did not "look White." In 1891, a large mob forcibly removed 11 Italian men in jail and killed them. The MSC sisters established a mission in the poorest Italian neighborhood in the city.

Cabrini was naturalized as a United States citizen in 1909. She applied for citizenship to assure the legal foundation of the MSC order after her death and to demonstrate solidarity with the Americans that she served.

In early second quarter 1912, Cabrini and several MSC sisters were visiting Naples, Italy. To return to the United States, they booked passage on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic to New York. However, after hearing about problems with the Columbus Extension Hospital in Chicago, Cabrini switched their bookings to an earlier voyage on a different ship. The Titanic sank in the North Atlantic with a massive loss of life on April 15 of that year. During her lifetime, Cabrini made 24 transatlantic crossings.

On one of her final trips, Cabrini visited Southern California in 1916. She constructed a chapel above the San Fernando Valley on Mount Raphael to protect the residents from wildfires. It was relocated in 1970 to Burbank, California, to become part of the Mother Cabrini Shrine.

Death and legacy

thumb|246x246px|Columbus Hospital, Chicago, Illinois (1922)

In failing health, Cabrini traveled to Chicago in 1917 to be cared for by the MSC sisters there. On 21 December 1917, she was wrapping sweets she bought as Christmas gifts for children at the Italian school. The next morning, she felt too ill to leave her bed. Sisters visited with her intermittently to attend to business of the order but eventually left her to rest. Shortly before noon, they discovered she had collapsed in her chair, with blood on her lips. She died suddenly, with some of her sisters around her, on 22 December, as a result of chronic endocarditis. She was 67 years old. Her remains were permanently exhumed in 1933 with the start of the campaign for her sainthood.

During her lifetime, Cabrini founded 67 orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean region, and in Europe.

Veneration

In 1921, Peter Smith was born in Columbus Hospital in New York. He was blinded when a nurse accidentally administered a 50% silver nitrate solution into his eyes. The doctors said that Smith's corneas were destroyed and that he was permanently blind. The mother superior of the hospital later touched a relic of Cabrini to his eyes and pinned a medal of Cabrini to his gown. The nurse who gave Smith the eyedrops prayed for the intercession of Cabrini to help him. When the doctors examined Smith 72 hours later, his eyes were normal. Smith then survived a severe bout of pneumonia. The Vatican cited this case as a miracle in 1938.

Sister Delphina Grazioli, an MSC sister, was dying after four surgical procedures in Seattle from 1925 to 1929. She saw a vision of Cabrini and then made a miraculous recovery. The Vatican accepted this also in 1938 as a miracle from Cabrini. The thousands of letters that she wrote, particularly to her sisters, were also examined during her canonization process.

Citing the Smith and Grazioli cures, Pope Pius XI beatified Cabrini on 13 November 1938. Smith, now a priest, attended the ceremony. Pope Pius XII canonised Cabrini on 7 July 1946.

In 1950, Pius XII named Cabrini as the patron saint of immigrants, recognizing her efforts worldwide to build schools, orphanages and hospitals. Pope Francis has stated that Cabrini's charitable works in Argentina inspired him to become a priest.

In the Roman Martyrology, Cabrini's feast day is 22 December, the anniversary of her death. This is the day ordinarily chosen as a saint's feast day. Following the reforms in Pope John XXIII's Code of Rubrics in 1960, the United States has celebrated Cabrini's feast day on 13 November, her beatification day. This change was made to avoid conflicting with the greater ferias of Advent.

Shrines

National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

thumb|303x303px|National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago, Illinois (2017)

The National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. When the shrine was founded in 1955, it was located within the Columbus Hospital complex in Chicago. Cabrini had founded the hospital in 1905, lived and worked there, and died there in 1917. After Cabrini's canonization in 1946, the archdiocese decided that it needed a shrine in her honor. When the hospital was demolished for a high rise development in 2002, the shrine closed for ten years. It was relocated next to the new development and renovated.

Cardinal Francis George rededicated the National Shrine in 2012. Today, it contains gold mosaics, Carrara marble, frescoes, and Florentine stained glass,. It also preserves the hospital room from the Columbus Hospital where Cabrini died. Visitors use the shrine today for worship, spiritual care, and pilgrimage.

After Cabrini's canonization in 1946, the MSC converted the summer camp into the Mother Cabrini Shrine. It contains a footpath partway up Lookout Mountain, marked with the Stations of the Cross, that ends at a statue of Jesus. The shrine campus includes a convent, visitor accommodations, a chapel and an exhibit of Cabrini artifacts. The statues and stained-glass windows in the chapel originated from the former Villa Cabrini Academy in Burbank, California.

Cabrini's canonization in 1946 brought a huge influx of visitors to the school chapel. To accommodate them, the sisters in 1960 moved her remains out of the high school to a separate shrine building on the campus. They now reside in a large bronze-and-glass reliquary casket in the shrine's altar. Cabrini's body is covered with her religious habit and a sculpted face mask and hands for viewing.

  • The Mother Cabrini Shrine in Burbank, California is located near the site of the former Villa Cabrini Academy, founded in 1937 by her order. The shrine consists of a chapel that Cabrini erected in the San Fernando Valley in 1916. The Italian Catholic Federation relocated the chapel to St. Francis Xavier Church in 1973 to save it from demolition. The federation added a library wing to the shrine in 1993.
  • The Shrine of Mother Cabrini is located on the campus of the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Lewiston, New York.
  • Our Lady of Pompeii Church in New York city has a shrine, a statue, and a stained-glass window dedicated to Cabrini. She and her Missionary Sisters taught religious education there.
  • The Mother Cabrini Shrine in Peru, New York, is a stone grotto on the grounds of St. Patrick Church. It was dedicated in 1947.
  • St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City has an statue of "S. Francisca Xaveria Cabrini", included among saints who founded religious congregations.

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Legacy

Churches and parishes

thumb|Stained glass window of Mother Cabrini at St. Stephen Church in Chesapeake, Virginia

Italy

  • St. Frances Cabrini Parish (Parrocchia di Santa Francesca Cabrini), Codogno
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Parish (Parrocchia Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini), Lodi
  • St. Frances Cabrini Parish (Parrocchia di Santa Francesca Cabrini), Rome

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United States

thumb|Mother Cabrini

  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Camp Verde, Arizona
  • St. Frances Cabrini - Our Lady of Lavang Catholic Church in Tucson, Arizona
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in Crestline, California
  • St. Frances X Cabrini Catholic Church in Los Angeles, California
  • St. Frances Cabrini Parish in San Jose, California
  • St. Frances X Cabrini Catholic Church in Yucaipa, California
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in North Haven, Connecticut, now part of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity Parish
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Parrish, Florida
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Parish in Spring Hill, Florida
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in St. Cloud, Florida
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Savannah, Georgia
  • St. Frances Cabrini Parish in Springfield, Illinois
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church in Livonia, Louisiana
  • Former St. Frances Cabrini Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, built in 1953 and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005
  • Former St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate, Massachusetts, closed in 2004
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Allen Park, Michigan
  • Church of St. Frances Cabrini in Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Omaha, Nebraska, a historic landmark and former cathedral
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Ocean City, New Jersey, now part of St. Damien Parish
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Piscataway, New Jersey
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Brooklyn, New York
  • St. Frances Cabrini R.C. Church in Coram, New York
  • Cabrini Parish in Rochester, New York
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church on Roosevelt Island, New York, now part of East River Catholics
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Colerain, Ohio
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in Lorain, Ohio
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. Now part of Mary Queen of Saints Roman Catholic Parish
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Community in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
  • Mother Cabrini Parish in Shamokin, Pennsylvania
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Lebanon, Tennessee
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in El Paso, Texas
  • St. Frances Cabrini & St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Granbury, Texas
  • Saint Frances Cabrini Mission Church in Hargill, Texas
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Houston, Texas
  • St. Frances Cabrini Church in Laredo, Texas
  • Mother Cabrini Parish in Pharr, Texas
  • Saint Frances Cabrini Church in San Antonio, Texas
  • St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Parish in Benton City, Washington
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Lakewood, Washington
  • St. Frances Cabrini Parish in West Bend, Wisconsin

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Other countries

  • St Francesca Cabrini Italian Church in Bedford, England

Educational institutions

thumb|Villa Cabrini Academy, Burbank, California

thumb|Mother Cabrini Mosaic at St. Robert Bellarmine School, Burbank, California (2008)

Italy

  • Istituto Comprensivo "F.S. Cabrini" in Milan

United States

  • The former Villa Cabrini Academy (1937–1970) in Burbank, California
  • St. Frances X. Cabrini Catholic School in Los Angeles, California
  • St. Frances Cabrini School in Savannah, Georgia
  • Cabrini High School in New Orleans, Louisiana
  • Cabrini High School in Allen Park, Michigan
  • St. Frances Cabrini Academy elementary school in St. Louis, Missouri
  • Saint Frances Cabrini Catholic Academy in Brooklyn, New York
  • The former Mother Cabrini High School (1899–2014) in Manhattan, New York
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Cabrini University in Radnor, Pennsylvania
  • Cabrini High School, New Orleans, Louisiana
  • Mother Cabrini High School, New York City
  • St. Frances Cabrini Catholic School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Cabrini Catholic School, Allen Park, Michigan
  • Saint Frances Cabrini Catholic School, San Jose, California
  • St. Brigid - St. Frances Cabrini Academy, Brooklyn, New York
  • St. Frances Cabrini Academy, St. Louis, Missouri

Other nations

  • Instituto Cabrini in Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Colégio Regina Coeli, Rio Pomba, Brazil
  • Colégio Boni Consilii, Campos Elíseos, Brazil
  • Colégio Madre Cabrini, São Paulo, Brazil
  • Centro de Formação e Espiritualidade Cabriniana, Tijuca, Brazil
  • St. Frances Cabrini Elementary School, Delhi, Ontario, Canada
  • Mother Cabrini Catholic School in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada
  • Ensemble Scolaire Françoise Cabrini in Noisy-le-Grand, France (former orphanage)
  • LPU-St. Cabrini College of Allied Medicine in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines
  • Colegio Santa Francisca Javier Cabrini in Madrid, Spain

Hospitals

thumb|Former Cabrini Medical Center, New York City

  • St Francis Xavier Cabrini Hospital, opened by MSC in 1958 in Melbourne, Victoria, in Australia. It is now Cabrini Health, a network of hospitals and other facilities.
  • Santa Cabrini Hospital, founded in 1960 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  • St. Frances Cabrini Medical Center and Cancer Institute in Santo Tomas City, Batangas, in Philippines
  • The former St. Cabrini Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1910 as the Columbus Hospital Extension. It became St. Cabrini Hospital in 1946
  • Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana, founded shortly after her canonization, and named because Bishop Charles Greco had met her in his childhood
  • The former Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. It was formed by a merger with Columbus Hospital, co-founded by Cabrini in 1892

Film

Cabrini (2024): Cabrini is portrayed by Cristiana Dell'Anna

Institutions with Cabrini name

thumb|Cabrini Woods Nature Sanctuary, New York City

  • The former St. Cabrini Home in West Park, New York. Was Cabrini's first orphanage, the American MSC headquarters and her original burial place. The facility closed in 2011.
  • The Cabrini Museum and Spirituality Center occupies the convent that Cabrini founded in Codogno, Italy in 1880.
  • The former Cabrini University in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Founded by the MSC in 1958, it closed in 2024. Now part of Villanova University.
  • RSA Santa Francesca Cabrini is a residential care facility for the elderly in Codogno.
  • The Cabrini Mission Foundation, founded in 1998, supports Cabrini programs worldwide and institutions focused on health care, education, and social services.
  • Cabrini of Westchester consists of two residential facilities for the elderly in Manhattan and Dobbs Ferry, New York that are operated by the MSC.
  • The Cabrini–Green public housing project in Chicago, built between 1942 and 1962. The high rise sections of the project were demolished in 1995.
  • Cabrini Boulevard in Manhattan, New York.
  • Cabrini Woods Nature Sanctuary in Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan in New York
  • Mother Cabrini Park in Newark, New Jersey. It includes a statue of Cabrini on the site of a school she founded.
  • Mother Cabrini Park in Brooklyn, New York, in 1992, located on the site of a school Cabrini founded.
  • The Cabrini-Zentrum near Offenstetten, Germany, is a school and home for orphans and special needs children, with disabilities. It was founded by the Katholische Jugendfürsorge Regensburg in 1946.
  • Mother Cabrini Center in the Archdiocese of San Antonio for training religious sisters from other nations.
  • Villa Cabrini, a not-for-profit independent residential complex for seniors located in Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

Honors

  • Cabrini was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1996.
  • Cabrini was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2022.
  • The State of Colorado replaced its Columbus Day state holiday with Cabrini Day in 2020.
  • A public memorial to Cabrini installed in 2020 in Battery Park City in Manhattan.
  • A mural on the side of Arriana Condominium in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, painted in 2012, honors Cabrini and the Italian community.

See also

  • List of Americans venerated in the Catholic Church
  • Italians in Chicago
  • List of Catholic saints
  • Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, patron saint archive
  • Italian Americans

Bibliography

Nonfiction

  • Maynard, Theodore. Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Frances Cabrini. Foreword by Timothy Cardinal Dolan. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024 [original: 1945].
  • De Donato, Pietro. Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini. New York: McGraw Hill, 1960.
  • De Maria, Mother Saverio. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. Translated by Rose Basile Green. Chicago: Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1984.
  • Travels of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini: Foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Edited by Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Chicago: Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1984.
  • All Things Are Possible: The Selected Writings of Mother Cabrini. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2025.
  • Journal of a Trusting Heart: Retreat Notes of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, 1876-1911. Macao, China: Claretian Publications, 2023.

Fiction

  • Gregory, Nicole. God's Messenger: The Astounding Achievements of Mother Frances X. Cabrini: A Novel. Washington, D.C.: Barbera Foundation, 2018.

Children and Young Adults

  • Keyes, Frances Parkinson. Mother Cabrini: Missionary to the World. Vision Books. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997.
  • Andes, Mary Lou and Victoria Dority. Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini: Cecchina's Dream. Illustrated by Barbara Kiwak. Boston: Pauline Books, 2005.

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Lorit, Sergio C. Frances Cabrini. New City Press (1975, Second Printing).
  • Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Frances Cabrini by Theodore Maynard, with a foreword by Timothy Cardinal Dolan (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024 [1945])
  • "Cardinal Spellman Honors Mother Cabrini". Newsreel footage marking her canonization (1946).