Saint Frances Cabrini 19thC Italian

Saint Frances Cabrini was born on July 15, 1850, and she died on December 22, 1917. She was known as Mother Cabrini and was a prominent Italian American religious sister in the Roman Catholic Church. Saint Frances Cabrini was the very first American to be recognized by the Vatican as a saint. Saint Frances Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC), a religious institute that still exists and provides education, health care, and other services to the poor in 15 nations.  The Vatican in 1950 named her the patron saint of immigrants. Did you know she was the first American to become a saint?

Saint Frances Cabrini Biography

Saint Frances Cabrini was born in Lombardy. She was the youngest of the 13 children, but only four of her siblings survived beyond adolescence. She was born two months prematurely, small and weak as a child, and stayed in delicate health throughout her life. Her uncle was a priest who used to make paper boats and put them in a river. Once she fell into the river and was swept downstream. Her rescuers found her on a riverbank. Cabrini attributed her rescue to divine intervention.

Saint Frances Cabrini’s older sister, Rosa, was a teacher, which influenced her to follow the same career path. When she was 13, Cabrini attended a school in Arluno, Lombardy, that was run by the daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1868, she graduated from the school with a teaching certificate and returned 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, and failed, admission to the daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno. In 1872, while working with the sick during a smallpox outbreak, she contracted the disease and was rejected by the Canossian Sisters of Crema, for health reasons again. 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.

Cabrini founded orphanages and convents in the United States and Italy. She received recognition for both. In September 1887, Saint Frances  Cabrini went to Rome to meet Leo XIII. She asked him for permission to set up a convent in Rome, which he readily gave. In February 1889, Cabrini sailed to New York City with the MSC sisters. They met the archbishop in New York City. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and she traveled all around the United States.

In failing health, Saint Frances Cabrini went to Chicago in 1917 to be cared for by the MSC sisters there. On December 21, 1917, she was wrapping sweets she bought as Christmas gifts for children at an Italian school there. The next morning, she felt too ill to leave her bed. Shortly before noon, the MSC Sisters there discovered she had collapsed in her chair, with blood on her lips. She died suddenly, with some of her sisters around her, on December 22, as a result of chronic endocarditis. She was 67 years old

Saint Frances Cabrini 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 mother superior of the hospital later touched a relic of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini’s to his eyes, and he was cured. The Vatican cited this as a miracle in 1938. Sister Delphina Grazioli, an MSC sister, was dying after several surgical procedures in Seattle between 1925 and 1929. She saw a vision of Cabrini and then made a miraculous recovery. The Vatican also accepted this in 1938 as a miracle from Cabrini.

In 1933, Saint Frances Cabrini’s body was exhumed and divided as part of her canonization process. They sent her head to the MSC motherhouse in Rome. Her heart went to Codogno, and her arm bone to the National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago. The sisters sent the rest of her remains to the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in New York City.

Citing the Smith and Grazioli cures, Pope Pius XI beatified Saint Frances  Cabrini on 13 November 13, 1938. Pope Pius XII canonized Cabrini on July 7, 1946. After Cabrini was canonized, an estimated 120,000 people attended a mass of thanksgiving at Soldier Field (in Chicago). In 1950, Pius XII named Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini as the patron saint of immigrants.

In the Roman Martyrology, Saint Frances Cabrini’s feast day is December 22, 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 November 13, her beatification day. So, you know when to honor her.

Conclusion

Saint Frances Cabrini was a contemporary saint who founded orphanages and convents in both America and Italy. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1909. She had a massive effect in both countries despite the frail health that plagued her throughout her life. It demonstrates that you, too, can achieve great things if you put your mind to it, regardless of your physical limitations.