Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

She brought no guns or gold. She brought only a heart on fire with love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus and an iron will nothing could break. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini became the mother, protector and steady support of millions of destitute immigrants.

She crossed the Atlantic nearly thirty times, opened a network of schools, hospitals and orphanages stretching across both Americas, and became the first citizen of the United States to be canonized by the Church.

Yet that little girl dreamed of vast horizons. Sitting by the Brembiolo river, Francesca would fold little paper boats, put wild violets in them to stand for missionaries, and set them floating downstream, dreaming of one day going all the way to faraway China to proclaim the Gospel. It was a child’s game, but also a silent prophecy of a life that would stretch across the oceans.

At eighteen, Francesca earned her primary teaching certificate. Longing to give herself to God, she applied to two orders of sisters devoted to charity, but both flatly refused her because her health was too fragile, believing she would not survive the novitiate. Twice refused, twice told in effect that her weak body was not fit for religious life: for a less determined soul, the dream might have died right there.

Undaunted, in 1874, obeying her parish priest, she went to work at a small orphanage called the House of Providence in Codogno. For six long years she patiently bore the misunderstandings and erratic temper of the woman who ran it, while forming a group of devout young women who shared her vision.

For her, the word of the Holy Father was God’s command. Mother Cabrini set aside her dream of Asia at once, without hesitation or a word of regret. Her own rejections as a young woman had taught her that one’s own will, however fervent, must give way to God’s will made known through the Church.

On March 31, 1889, she and six sisters stepped onto the docks of New York. A bitter surprise awaited them: because of earlier disagreements over money, the Archbishop of New York coldly advised the sisters to go back to Italy on the first available ship.

But Mother Cabrini answered calmly and firmly:

“Your Excellency, the Holy Father sent us here, and we cannot go back!”

She saw mud-smeared immigrant children who did not go to school, scorned by society as inferior. She gathered them, taught them to read and write, taught them English and catechism, and taught them pride in their roots. When there was no money to feed the children, she and the sisters themselves carried baskets and begged in streets full of cold stares.

Seeing that poor immigrants had no medical care and were turned away by the big hospitals, in 1892 she boldly founded Columbus Hospital in New York.

When engineers and contractors doubted the sisters’ ability to pay, Mother Cabrini herself put on a hard hat, rolled up her sleeves and climbed the high scaffolding to inspect every brick and bargain over the price of every bag of cement. Her faith did not sit and wait for fruit to fall; it was practical, intelligent and astonishingly brave.

She often told her sisters:

“If this work were ours, it would collapse; but if it is the work of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, no power on earth or in hell can stop it!”

• She went to Chicago to open schools and hospitals;
• she went to New Orleans to care for the children of Italian workers who had just been unjustly lynched by a racist mob;
• she crossed the rugged Rocky Mountains on horseback to reach the coal mines of Colorado, climbing down into deep, endless underground tunnels to visit and comfort miners working in danger.

She crossed the ocean to Central America, crossed the snow-covered Andes on muleback to reach Argentina, and opened schools in Buenos Aires. She went as far as Brazil, Nicaragua, France, England and Spain. In twenty-eight years of service, the woman once considered “too frail” founded sixty-seven charitable institutions, including hospitals, schools, orphanages and homes for the elderly. The body twice turned away by religious orders as too fragile crossed the Atlantic nearly thirty times on rolling steamships, in an age when a sea voyage could last weeks and was full of danger.

In the middle of December 1917, at Columbus Hospital in Chicago, Mother Cabrini was sitting at her desk, wrapping little packets of candy with her own hands as Christmas presents for the poor children of the neighborhood. Suddenly she was struck down by a return of malaria, made worse by exhaustion.

In 1933, during the process for her canonization, her body was exhumed. Most of her relics were brought to the chapel of Mother Cabrini High School in New York, now the Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini; her head is kept in the chapel of the congregation’s headquarters in Rome. Beneath the altar of the New York shrine, a wax figure modeled on her features lies in a glass case for pilgrims to see, while her actual remains are carefully kept in a bronze urn nearby. Also on display are everyday belongings such as her habit, her glasses and her stockings, reminding pilgrims that this great saint was first of all a human being of flesh and blood.

Pope Pius XI beatified her in 1938, and on July 7, 1946, Pope Pius XII solemnly canonized her. In 1950 she was proclaimed patron of immigrants throughout the world. The Church celebrates her on November 13 each year, formerly on December 22.

For Vietnamese people living far from home, struggling in foreign lands to make a living, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is a mother close at hand, someone to lean on in faith.