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Today we look at a missionary who was the first American citizen to be canonized. Her name, in Religious life, was Frances Xavier Cabrini.
Maria Francesca Cabrini was born on July 15, 1850 in Italy, the youngest of 13 children in a farm family. As a child, she would visit an uncle who lived by a swift-running canal. On these visits, she would make boats of paper, drop violets in them, and send the little paper boats off to India and China. She called the violets “missionaries.”
As a teen, she wanted to join the order of Sisters who were her teachers, but they told her she was too frail. So, she became the head of an orphanage. There, she gathered a small group of women to live as Religious, and in 1877, she took vows.
In November 1880, Sr. Frances Xavier and seven other women founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (M.S.C.). They cared for orphans, opened a school, and did embroidery to earn money.
In 1887, Sr. Frances Xavier sought permission from Pope Leo XIII to take a band of her sisters to be missionaries in China. Instead of giving his permission, he talked her into taking her band of Sisters to the United States to help the hordes of Italian immigrants moving there and living in poverty. So, Sr. Frances Xavier Cabrini arrived with her Sisters in New York City on March 31, 1889.
For the next 35 years, in spite of incredible obstacles, Mother Cabrini, as she was known, founded 67 institutions all across the continental United States – schools, nursing centers, orphanages, and hospitals. This was what the woman – who had been denied admission to a teaching order of Sister for being “too frail” – accomplished!
At the age of 67, Mother Cabrini died of complications from malaria in Columbus Hospital in Chicago, Illinois – one of the many hospitals she had founded.
Pope Pius XII canonized Mother Cabrini on July 7, 1946. A crowd of 120,000 flooded Soldiers’ Field in Chicago for a Mass of Thanksgiving at the time of her canonization. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini has the honor of being the first American citizen to be canonized. Later, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton would have the honor of being the first native-born American citizen to be canonized when she was made a saint in 1975.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is a patron saint of immigrants. Hilariously, she is also informally recognized as a saintly intercessor to contact when trying to find a parking space. As one priest explained, “She lived in New York City. She understands traffic.”
St. Francis Xavier Cabrini’s feast day is November 13.
Another remembrance of a great and saintly life. Love the quip about traffic at the end.😊