Francesca Cabrini

Frances Xavier Cabrini (Italian: Francesca Saverio [or Saveria] Cabrini; 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 (MSC), a re...

Frances Xavier Cabrini (Italian: Francesca Saverio [or Saveria] Cabrini; 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 (MSC), 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. Born two months prematurely, Frances Cabrini was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health throughout her life. During her childhood, she visited an uncle, Don Luigi Oldini of Livraga, a priest who lived beside a canal. While in Livraga, she made little paper boats, dropped violets she called "missionaries" in the boats, and launched them in the stream to sail to India and China. Cabrini made her first holy communion at age nine. 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. Cabrini's older sister Rosa was a teacher, which influenced her to follow the same career path. At age 13, Cabrini attended a school in Arluno, Lombardy, that was run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1868, she graduated cum laude from the school with a teaching certificate and returned to Sant'Angelo Lodigiano to teach at the parish school. 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. It was reported, however, that the priest in Cabrini's parish asked the two orders to deny her application because he did not want to lose her as a teacher. Orphanage in Italy In 1874, a priest in Codogno, Lombardy, invited Cabrini to take over a poorly-run orphanage operated by the Sisters of Providence in that town. After arriving in Codogno, Cabrini took religious vows into Sisters of Providence, finally achieving her goal of becoming a religious sister. She added Xavier (Saverio in Italian) to her name to honor Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionary service. Like Xavier, her ultimate ambition was to become a missionary in East Asia. However, the two Providence sisters in charge of the orphanage finances were jealous of Cabrini and worked to thwart her actions. In 1880, due to their turmoil, the Providence Sisters in Codogno dissolved and the orphanage closed. Cabrini then spoke with the bishop of the Diocese of Lodi, Domenico Gelmini, about her future. He told Cabrini that she should pursue her dream of becoming a missionary, but that he did not know of any religious orders that would train her. Cabrini responded by saying that she would start her own missionary order. 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. Over the next five years, the MSC sisters established seven homes, a free school and a nursery in Lombardy. In early 1887, with the blessing of Bishop Giovanni Scalabrini of Piacenza, Cabrini opened a convent in Castel San Giovanni in the Emilia-Romagna region. Scalabrini had recently founded the Scalabrinian Missionaries, an order of priests to perform missionary work with Italian immigrants in New York City. He believed that the MSC sisters would be of tremendous assistance to the priests in their work. He asked Cabrini to consider opening an orphanage in New York. Countess Mary Reid DiCesnola, a wealthy Catholic socialite in Manhattan, had been relentlessly petitioning both the pope and Archbishop Michael Corrigan of New York to open an orphanage there for Italian girls, which she would fund. Cabrini still wanted to go to Asia, but also wanted to open a religious home in Rome and gain papal approval for MSC. She allowed Scalabrini set up a meeting with Pope Leo XIII. Papal recognition 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. During the 1880s, the pope and the rest of the Roman Curia were worried about the large numbers of impoverished Italian immigrants emigrating to New York. Leo was concerned that these Catholics would leave the Church unless they received material assistance and spiritual guidance. Instead of allowing Cabrini to go to China, Leo XIII told her, go "...not to the East, but to the West..." to New York City. In December 1888, Cabrini committed to going to New York City. The pope also recognized the MSC as a missionary institute, the first group of Italian religious sisters to receive that approval. Scalabrini promised Cabrini that his religious order, Scalabrinians would greet the MSC sisters in New York City, take care of their needs, and work closely with them. Mission in New York Arrival Corrigan wrote to Cabrini in February 1889, welcoming her to New York City, but advising her to delay her departure to allow more time for preparation. However, when the letter reached Italy, Cabrini was already gone. At age 38, Cabrini sailed for the United States, arriving in New York City on March 31, 1889, with six other MSC sisters. 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. During this period, the Catholic hierarchy and clergy in New York City were dominated by Irish immigrants who shared a common prejudice against Italians. Many of the Irish Catholics considered the Italians to be dirty, superstitious and almost pagan. Many of the Irish-run parishes segregated Italian worshippers in church basements. The archdiocese had very few Italian priests, hindering communication with the Italians. Corrigan, also Irish, believed that only men were suitable for missionary work with immigrants. He had wanted the Vatican to just send him Italian priests, not religious sisters. Meeting with archbishop The day after arriving in New York, Cabrini and the other sisters walked into Corrigan's office. Totally surprised that they were in New York, Corrigan told Cabrini that the archdiocese was unready for them and that they should immediately return to Italy. Cabrini refused to go back, simply saying, “I have letters from the pope”, and gave her letters of introduction to Corrigan. Unwilling to defy a papal mandate, Corrigan could not force the MSC sisters to leave. Corrigan asked Cabrini to establish a school for Italians first and wait on the orphanage. After the meeting with Corrigan, the Sisters of Charity in the Bronx gladly provided temporary residence for Cabrini and her entourage at their convent. After much delay, the Scalabrinian priests provided a rundown convent for the MSC sisters in the Five Points area of Manhattan. Mission work Soon after their arrival in the city, the MSC sisters started experiencing degrading, anti-Italian slurs and insults. Cabrini wrote back to the sisters in Italy, asking that they send over fabrics for the making of additional veils and habits. She wanted her sisters to be cleanly dressed, “otherwise they will call us ‘guinea-pigs’ the way they do to the Italians here.” 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. With the help of sisters from the other religious orders in New York, the MSC sisters started tending the sick, teaching children and feeding the hungry. They set up a makeshift school for 200 children in the balcony of a local Catholic church. Soon the merchants in Little Italy started providing the sisters with food and funding to support their mission. With Corrigan's blessing and funding from DiCesnola, Cabrini opened the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This was her first orphanage in the United States. However, the high cost of running the orphanage in the city, plus increasing friction with Corrigan, soon prompted Cabrini to move it to the countryside. First orphanage in United States In 1890, Cabrini purchased a property from the Jesuits in West Park, New York, where she relocated the orphanage. She also established an MSC novitiate on the property. The West Park campus became St. Cabrini Home, the MSC headquarters in the United States and a boarding school. At that time, other orphanages would automatically force girls to leave once they turned age 14. Cabrini refused to do that. She insisted that the orphanages only discharge the girls if they were placed with an adoptive family or trained to earn an independent living. Cabrini once wrote:“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.”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 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 ar