Frances Xavier Cabrini

American religious leader

• Born: July 15, 1850
• Birthplace: Sant' Angelo Lodigiano, Lombardy (now in Italy)
• Died: December 22, 1917
• Place of death: Chicago, Illinois

The first American citizen to be canonized a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, Mother Cabrini was the founder of a religious community dedicated to helping the poor. She contributed to missions among Italian immigrants to America, eventually establishing convents, schools, and charitable orphanages all over the world.

Early Life

The last of thirteen children born of Augustino and Stella (Oldini) Cabrini, Frances Xavier Cabrini was baptized Maria Francesca, at which time miraculous evidence of her piety was said to have appeared in the form of white doves that flitted about the house on that day. Her family was well known for its dedication to the Roman Catholic Church, and one of her uncles, Luigi Oldini, was a priest and foreign missionary. Luigi taught her games associated with missionary work that helped to mold young Frances into a surprisingly serious and pious young girl.

By the time Frances was twelve, she began taking an annual oath of virginity, which she declared permanent at the age of eighteen. She attended a private normal school under the direction of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Arluno, where her sister Rosa was preceptress. Frances graduated in 1870. In September of that same year, the united Kingdom of Italy was established after the Papal States capitulated and acknowledged the sovereignty of Savoyard forces. The birth of a united Italy resulted in a severe curb on the traditional authority of the Roman Catholic Church over schools, hospitals, and charitable enterprises.

In 1872, Frances fell victim to a smallpox epidemic while caring for the sick. While she was still recovering, she began teaching at the school of Vidardo, where she found her ability to teach Christian doctrine firmly repressed by secularizing laws. Unsatisfied with her limited opportunities to serve the Roman Catholic Church in this role, she petitioned in 1874 to become one of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart. Her petition was denied on the basis of her fragile health, but her zeal was noted by Father Antonio Serrati, who appointed her to supervise an orphanage in Codogno.

Three years later, in 1877, Frances founded a new convent, called the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Her foundation grew rapidly; in 1888, her society received an official decree of commendation. Mother Frances Xavier, as she then became known, led the sisters in founding orphanages and schools all over Italy. Pope Leo XIII commended her work and called her “a woman of marvelous intuition and of great sanctity.”

Life’s Work

Mother Frances Cabrini also expressed a strong desire to begin a foreign mission, preferably in China. Pope Leo XIII instead decided to send her to the United States, an area that was becoming a great concern among Vatican leaders. More than one million Italian immigrants were flooding into the United States between 1880 and 1902. These new arrivals crowded into makeshift tenements located in teeming neighborhoods in large American cities. They worked long and grueling hours for pitiful wages under the control of Italian padrones, agents who organized labor gangs to work in exchange for paying for their passage across the Atlantic, and American sweatshop owners. Practically all of these Italian émigrés considered themselves to be Roman Catholics, but their religious practices, if they engaged in any at all, consisted of an informal jumbling of local traditions from back home and family superstitions that bore little resemblance to official Catholic teachings.

By the 1880’s, the Vatican was beginning to take an intense interest in the plight of Italian Americans. With the support of Pope Leo XIII, Giovanni Battista Scalabrini began a concentrated endeavor to minister to the spiritual and physical needs of these uprooted people. A Scalabrinian mission was sent to New York. As part of this ministerial program, the Catholic Church would encourage female religious orders to assist Italian American communities by providing staff for local orphanages and schools.

Cabrini was sent to New York to fulfill plans for an Italian orphanage for girls proposed by Countess Mary Reid DiCesnola. The countess’s proposal to fund a Catholic charity was common in a day when the intellectual and social elite were expected to engage in at least a token attempt to alleviate the suffering of the illiterate and unwashed masses. Consequently, the countess designed an orphanage to provide young girls with basic schooling as well as training in fine needlework and fine laundrywork, all skills that would be useful to the countess’s society friends, where the girls were expected to practice their crafts.

When Scalabrini and the pope suggested that Mother Cabrini go to New York, Cabrini was given the impression that her charitable work would be performed under the supervision of Archbishop Michael Corrigan of New York, and that preparations had already been made for the arrival of the sisters. Cabrini arrived in New York on March 31, 1889, only to find that her superiors in Italy had been gravely misinformed. No accommodations for the sisters had been secured; in fact, Corrigan had written to Cabrini shortly before her departure from Italy suggesting that she delay her journey, but the letter had arrived too late.

Corrigan greeted Cabrini coolly and suggested that the sisters return to Italy immediately. Cabrini stoutly refused. Corrigan finally agreed to allow the nuns to stay if they would establish an Italian school on the lower East Side of the city. He quickly came to loggerheads with the countess over this issue. The countess wanted the sisters to serve as inexpensive labor for her orphanage and suggested that they support themselves by seeking outside employment. In the end, the countess was forced to yield to the archbishop and turn control of the orphanage, along with all money previously collected, over to Mother Cabrini. The orphanage opened on April 21, 1889.

Growing tension between the countess and the archbishop convinced Cabrini of the necessity of acquiring another site for the orphanage. By June, 1890, she had raised sufficient funds to purchase a Jesuit novitiate that became the new site of Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum and a novitiate for the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Cabrini also became more closely involved in the projects begun by the Scalabrinian missionaries in New York, including a proposal to build an Italian hospital, for which Cabrini and her sisters solicited the funds. Columbus Hospital was incorporated on May 18, 1891.

Not content to rest on her laurels, the dynamic Mother Cabrini left her New York projects in the hands of other sisters and traveled to Nicaragua in September, 1891, where she founded a house and school. From there she opened a school for Italian children in New Orleans, where she remained until recalled to New York to settle a dispute between the Scalabrinian priests and her nuns.

Cabrini returned to New York in April of 1892, where she found the Columbus Hospital in dire financial straits. The leader of the Scalabrinian mission, the Reverend Felice Morelli, had pushed the mission deeply into debt by borrowing money at exorbitant interest to purchase buildings and land. Morelli was unable to pay the debt on the hospital, which was threatened with public auction to satisfy his creditors. In Mother Cabrini’s absence, Morelli had attempted to shift the debt onto the shoulders of the sisters. Cabrini decided to disassociate her order from the original hospital and, with a grant of $550 from Archbishop Corrigan and some wealthy Italians, she opened a new Columbus Hospital in two rented apartments. The new hospital was expanded in 1894.

The work of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart continued to grow after Corrigan’s death in 1902 to include more schools and orphanages. The sisters also visited hospitals and almshouses, tombs and prisons. Quietly but persistently, the small and frail Frances Cabrini cultivated the support of bishop after bishop throughout the United States and around the world. She founded orphanages and schools in Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, and Philadelphia, as well as in such far-off locations as Buenos Aires, Paris, Madrid, London, and Brazil. She also founded several modern charitable hospitals in New York, Chicago, and Seattle.

Following a brief illness, Mother Cabrini died on December 22, 1917, at Columbus Hospital in Chicago. At her death, she was mother-general to some four thousand nuns and had founded seventy charitable institutions the world over. Her funeral was officiated by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Mundelein and her remains were laid to rest in New York. Soon after her death, her associates, led by Cardinal Mundelein, promoted her cause before the pope and the archdioceses of New York and Chicago. She was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church on November 13, 1938, after the rule that required fifty years to elapse before the beatification process could be initiated was waived for her case. She became the first American to achieve this honor.

Significance

Frances Xavier Cabrini brought increased unity to the Italian community in New York through her charitable efforts. Her highest goal in her mission work was to strengthen the ties between the Italian immigrants and the Roman Catholic Church. Although she was often frustrated in her failure to wipe out “the worldly spirit” that she felt all around her, she contributed greatly to the growth of popular faith in the Italian community in New York City and in cities throughout the United States. Her worldwide missions also established charitable organizations to help those living in less affluent parts of the world.

Mother Cabrini achieved a worldwide reputation for her religious zeal, her diplomatic skill, and her talents as a businesswoman. She fought valiantly to create a role for Catholic women in foreign missionary work. When reminded by a male colleague that missionaries historically had always been men, Cabrini is said to have replied, “If the mission of announcing the Lord’s resurrection to his apostles had been entrusted to Mary Magdalene, it would seem a very good thing to confide to other women an evangelizing mission.” Contemporaries often referred to her as “a great man” or “a statesman” for want of a better term. Pope Pius XI considered her name “equal to a poem—a poem of activity, a poem of intelligence, a poem above all of wonderful charity.” Through her zeal and her intrepid determination, Mother Cabrini helped to establish a vital role for Catholic women in the area of foreign missions and to increase their visibility within the Roman Catholic Church.

Bibliography

Border, Lucille Papin. Francesca Cabrini: Without Staff or Script. New York: Macmillan, 1945. An older biography meant for popular audiences, this work is extremely sympathetic to Cabrini and focuses primarily on her role as head of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

Di Donato, Pietro. Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini. Reprint. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Originally published in 1960, this modern, scholarly biography of Cabrini gives the best background information on the period in which she lived. It uses archives of the Vatican opened to the public in 1978, as well as materials from the Congregation of Propaganda Fide that were opened by Pope John Paul II.

DiGiovanni, Stephen Michael. “Mother Cabrini: Early Years in New York.” Catholic Historical Review 77, no. 1 (January 1, 1991): 56-77. This is the most comprehensive account of the circumstances that led to Mother Cabrini’s dispatch to New York and of her early work with the Italian population there. DiGiovanni sets Cabrini’s work in the context of political developments within the Roman Catholic leadership both in Rome and in New York during the 1880’s.

Martindale, Cyril C. Life of Mother Francesca Saverio Cabrini. New York: Burns, 1931. Based on biographical materials collected by the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, this brief treatment of Mother Cabrini was compiled as part of the campaign by her colleagues and friends to convene a hearing for Cabrini’s beatification.

Maynard, Theodore. Too Small a World: The Life of Francesca Cabrini. Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing, 1945. An uncritical and simple biography, this book concentrates on Mother Cabrini’s role as a worldwide ambassador for the Roman Catholic Church. It is the best source for study of Cabrini’s work outside the United States.

Sullivan, Mary Louise. Mother Cabrini: “Italian Immigrant of the Century.” New York: Center for Migration Studies of New York, 1992. Biography placing Cabrini within the framework of the Italian immigrant experience.

Sultan, Timothy, and Alex Heard. “Cabrini at 50.” New York Times Magazine 145, no. 50481 (July 7, 1996): 8. Brief history of Cabrini’s canonization, including the miracles she performed and the display of her remains in New York City.