St Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917) missionary to Italian workers in the USA
Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonised. Born in Northern Italy, she wanted to be a missionary in China, but Bishop Scalabrini and Pope Peo XIII directed her towards Italian workers in the United States. There, despite many adversities, her deep trust in God gave her the strength to set up many schools, orphanages and hospitals. Her sisters, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, have centres today on six continents.
Born in Italy
Born in 1850, the youngest of thirteen children of an Italian farmer Agostino and her mother Stella; they lived at Sant’Angelo Lodigiano in the province of Lombardy, northern Italy. Francesca (her baptismal name) had a strict upbringing. When she was twenty, both her parents died. She qualified as a primary school teacher and wanted to join religious life, but the two orders she applied to rejected her. She was less than five feet in height!
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart
She began charitable work with a team of young women at the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadogno, Italy, but this had to be closed down for lack of funds. In September 1877, she took religious vows and wanted to go as a missionary to China and added Xavier to her name. Seven of her companions at the orphanage joined her in the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. At the urging of Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini of Piacenza who had founded a missionary society of priests for Italian migrants and Pope Leo XIII, she went instead with six sisters to New York in 1889 to work with Italian immigrants living and working there.
With Italian immigrants in New York
Here she met with many disappointments. Archbishop of New York Michael Corrigan was at first unsupportive and advised her to return home. However, she valiantly began teaching and caring for the sick and orphans. Bishop Scalabrini convinced Corrigan that her work deserved better support and at his request she undertook hospital work for the Italian sick poor in New York city. In 1890 she set up the novitiate and head house of her congregation in the USA at West Park on the River Hudson. She later travelled to Chicago and Seattle and established other hospitals there. Her sisters staffed a parish school and an orphanage for a colony of Italian immigrants working under harsh conditions in the mines in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and later in the Santa Monica Mountains in California.
Her death and legacy
When Mother Cabrini died on 22nd December 1917, 67 missions of the Institute had been established, ministries of healing, teaching, caring, giving and reaching out, in cities of the United States, Italy, France, England, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and Nicaragua. In 1946, she became the first American citizen to be canonised. Pope Pius XII also declared her the patroness of immigrants.