St. Frances X Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, 1850-1917

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini was a woman of our time. Her personality fascinated her contemporaries. Because she modeled her daily life in the Gospel, she influenced others to venerate religion; furthermore, in her personal contacts, she made the virtuous life attractive to both rich and poor.

She was born July 15, 1850, in Lombardy, in northern Italy in the town of Sant’ Angelo, in the Lodi region. The tenth of eleven brothers and sisters Frances was in poor health. Her schooling was frequently interrupted by illness. After the normal School of Arluno, a village close to her hometown, she asked to be a member of the Daughter of the Sacred Heart. The superior did not accept her. She advised her to wait until a later time. She would found another Institute to bring new glory to the Heart of Jesus. Excuse or prophecy, Mother Superior was not mistaken.

Young Frances worked for a certain time in the House of Providence in Codogno a girl’s orphanage. Here, she transformed this institution into a religious house. It was very frustrating and a painful time in her life. Finally in 1877, aged 27 Frances Xavier made her religious profession establishing the foundation for the future Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

At the age of thirty Frances experienced a very serious set back in her life. She fell ill being physically exhausted from constant traveling, organizing new missions. During all this time Frances Cabrini never stopped preparing herself for the goal of her life to be a missionary to China. As a childhood pastime, she used to fill paper boats with violets and send them as missionaries to the Far East. Instead in March 31, 1889 she set out for New York where no convent had been prepared and no reservation had been made. She and her Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had to start from scratch in establishing shelters and soup kitchens for poor Italian immigrants in Manhattan. In many hopeless situations s he had the courage to trust without limit in God’s providence. She established boarding houses and shelters in New York City, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Mississippi, Colorado, California, Washington, Illinois and a few places in South America. Despite the fact of being Mother Superior and administrator of large hospitals and shelters she never stopped doing the ordinary chores of mopping the floor. Her mystical experiences flowing out from prayer and self-sacrifice made her not only tireless and active, but also contemplative and a prayerful person.

On December 22, 1917, a few days before Christmas, St. Frances Cabrini died in a hospital she founded in Chicago. The news of her death flashed to all the countries where she had established her missions; but because of wartime censorship the message was somewhat delayed. She was canonized in 1946; her body is enshrined in the Chapel of the Cabrini Memorial School in Fort Washington, New York. No doubt there were many saints in the United States before her, and no doubt that there will be many after her. But she was the first citizen of the USA to be canonized; to have her sanctity publicly recognized by the Church. Her glory belongs to Italy and America, to the Church and to mankind.