As a young girl, Francesca Cabrini dreamed of being a
missionary. She would dress up her dolls
like nuns and put them in paper boats pretending to send them to China to
spread the faith. She wouldn’t eat
sweets because she didn’t think they would have sweets in China.
Born in the little village of Sant’Angelo in the Lombardy
region of Italy, two months premature, she had frail health her entire
life. Though she was a certified teacher
by the age of 18, she was rejected by several religious communities because of
her poor health.
But she persevered in following her lifelong calling as a
missionary. At the encouragement of her
bishop, Francesca started her own religious community, the Missionary Sisters
of the Sacred Heart in 1877. Within a
few years she and her sisters had opened six orphanages.
Early in 1889 Pope Leo XIII asked her to go to the United
States to care for the Italian Immigrants who came to the US. Within a few years, she opened a Catholic
school in New York City, founded an orphanage and hospital for the immigrants
which had wards which were free to the poor.
She built other hospitals in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle,
New Orleans, and Chicago.
Her thirty-seven years as a missionary sister saw her
constantly on the move. When she died in
1917, she left behind sixty-seven convents in Europe, the United States, and
South America housing 1500 Sisters.
Mother Cabrini’s relics are enshrined in the Church’s altar
at her shrine in Manhattan, where she served so many Italian immigrants.
Since she was naturalized as an American citizen in 1909,
she is the first American citizen to be canonized.
At her canonization in 1946, Pius XII said in his homily:
“Where did she acquire all that strength and the inexhaustible
energy by which she was able to perform to many good works and to surmount so
many difficulties? She accomplished all
this through the faith that was always so vibrant in her heart; through the
divine love that burned within her; and, finally, through the constant prayer
by which she was so closely united to God…She never let anything turn her aside
from striving to please God and to work for his glory for which nothing, aided
by grace, seemed too difficult or beyond human strength.
Mother Cabrini lived deeply the mission of the Church to
bring Christ’s compassion and care to all people. May we find through prayer and Sacraments and
Mother Cabrini’s intercession, that same inexhaustible energy for serving God’s
kingdom for his glory and the salvation of souls.
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