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            Patroness of Immigrants
                                                                        Dan Lynch
                                                                                                Copyright 2003
                                                             Permission is granted for non-commercial reproduction

She was not a humanitarian; she was a heroic lover of God. In her missions of charity, in her achievement of the impossible, it was not genius; her secret was Divine Love. This is the wonderful story, a romance that is gripping and striking. It is the story of a woman who lived among us, who saw the things which we see, a woman in whose soul Divine Love had consumed the last remnant of self, who came to love only God, and who saw God in every poor man, woman and child. . . . She loved us. She was our benefactor. She went begging in our streets. She rode our street cars. Through alleys she went in search of little hungry children who were homeless and friendless. . . .

Our Saint issues a challenge to each of us . . . no matter how gloomy the world about us may be, we can smile the serene smile of our Saint.

Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago, Radio Address, July 7, 1946, the day of the canonization of Mother Cabrini.

A prophetic, swiftly moving cloud of white appeared above the Lombard valley in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano in northern Italy, as Agostino Cabrini waited for his 52-year-old wife, Stella, to deliver their thirteenth and last child. The white cloud turned out to be a flock of white doves that circled their home and courtyard minutes before a midwife called out that Stella had delivered a premature baby girl.

The flock of doves landed on Agostino's courtyard to pick at the grain that was spread there to dry. He caught one and carried it into the house. It seemed that the dove was a symbol of his new daughter. She was baptized on the day of her birth, July 15, 1850, and named Maria Francesca. Francesca was the last of the 13 Cabrini children. Only she and three others survived.

Agostino and his sons worked hard on his land plowing, sowing and reaping. The women weeded, fed the animals and carried the noonday meal to the men in the fields. It was a typical life on a family farm in 19^th century Italy. Francesca’s sister, Rosa, who was fifteen years older, helped her mother to form and discipline Francesca. They called her “Cecchina”, an abbreviation of the diminutive Franceschina.

Francesca was confirmed at the age of seven. She later described it as a mystical experience in which she felt wrapped by a mantle of heavenly light. “The moment I was being anointed with the sacred chrism,” she said, “I cannot say what I felt, but I know it was the Holy Ghost.”

Her parents were devout Catholics whose piety influenced Francesca’s future vocation. They read aloud to their children various Catholic works including the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. This particular work inspired young Francesca with a desire to go to the missions in China. Because of her frailty and frequent illnesses, she developed a contemplative spirituality that fostered her desire to go to the China.

She filled handmade boats at play with violet blossoms representing missionaries to China and sailed them off in a local canal. She hoped to sail to China herself when she grew up. One day she fell into the canal and nearly drowned. An unknown force pulled her safely to the bank. She attributed this to her guardian angel. Ever afterwards she had an instinctive fear of water but her missionary vocation still stirred within her.

When she was thirteen, a visiting missionary related his experiences in the missions of China. She later mentioned her missionary desire to her sister, Rosa, who replied scornfully, "You, a missionary? An ignorant little thing like you, a missionary!” This helped Francesca to develop the virtue of humility. She continued to secretly cherish her missionary dream and geography became her favorite study. She spent hours looking over maps of the Far East.

     Francesca was described as having “piercing blue eyes, a ready smile and a soft voice." She was fair, delicate and attractive. So much so, that to prevent any youthful vanity, Rosa used to plaster and comb her hair down. She took an annual vow of virginity from the age of 13 and made it permanent when she reached 18. She said that she made this vow, "Because God wants it.”

                                                            Teacher

     From then on, Francesca considered that her heart belonged to Christ. She finished school and obtained a teaching certificate at the age of 18. Immediately she applied for admission to a religious order. She was refused. The sisters believed that Francesca’s constitution was too weak to stand up to religious life.

     For the next six years, Francesca taught in the public school, practiced works of mercy as a Third Order Secular of St. Francis and lived at home, quietly sharing the routine chores with Rosa. Together the sisters cared for their elderly parents until their deaths in 1870 when Francesca was 20 years old. She was now free to follow her vocation. However, the dream of being a missionary to China was not to be realized.

                                               Novitiate

      Francesca applied for admission to religious orders two more times. Each time she was apparently refused because of her health. However, the pastor of Codogno, Monsignor Antonio Serrati, may have blocked her admission because he had his own need of her. The House of Providence, Codogno’s orphanage, was in desperate need of reform. Antonia Tondini, the woman who founded and administered the orphanage, squandered its revenues and proved an unfit caretaker for the orphans. She and her staff were persuaded by the Bishop to form a religious community in hope that the situation would improve. They dressed like nuns but they didn’t act like them.

     Monsignor Serrati asked Francesca to bring order into the chaos. At first she refused, citing her desire to be a missionary, and her lack of authority over Madame Tondini. Eventually, however, she took the opportunity at hand and agreed to go with the understanding that it was only for two weeks. She was 24 years old.

     Three bleak years passed. Francesca brought cleanliness, kindness and a semblance of order to the orphanage. She gathered around her a small group of seven young women whom she trained as religious sisters. For her efforts, she was insulted and abused by Madame Tondini. On September 13, 1877, Monsignor Serrati told Francesca that he wanted her to take vows. She did so and then he received the professions of the seven orphans who were now her novices. She was the Mother Superior of the House of Providence.

     Madame Tondini now saw Francesca as a usurper. She terrorized the orphans who often fled to Francesca’s room for protection as Madame Tondini shouted and banged on the door. Eventually she even sued the Bishop in civil court for the return of the money that she had donated to found the orphanage. He finally excommunicated her and dissolved the House of Providence. Francesca was now 30 years old and had just completed her novitiate as a six-year trial by fire. She had begun her adult life teaching in the public school for six years while living in the orderly, peaceful, quiet home of her parents. Then she went for six years to a place of noise and chaos. She had proved to be one courageous, tenacious and patient woman. She never learned how to run an orphanage, she learned how not to run one.

                                       The Foundress

     After she left the dissolved House of Providence, the Bishop of Lodi, Dominic Gelmini, urged Francesca to found her own community. He said, “You always wanted to be a missionary. I know of no such order for women. Why not found one yourself?” This was a very unusual request for the Bishop to make at a time in Italy of severe anti-clericalism. The Italian government was suppressing religious orders, it had appropriated most of the Vatican territory and it had made the Pope as he said, "A prisoner of the Vatican." Francesca simply answered the Bishop, “I will look for a house.”

     Monsignor Serrati helped her to obtain an abandoned Franciscan monastery. Joined by seven of the former orphans, Francesca began her new congregation as a diocesan Institute with their first Mass on November 14, 1880. Their habit was peasant dress. Their principal work was to be the Christian education of girls. They were eventually called The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. That day Francesca also added the name “Xavier” to her own, in honor of St. Francis Xavier, the Jesuit apostle to the Far East where her heart had longed to go. She was now Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini.

     Her first convent was poor and humble. The community started with no lights or beds. They prayed in the dark and slept on hay brought in from the fields. Young peasant girls from the neighboring towns soon joined them and they expanded their house doing the bricklaying themselves. She accepted new candidates before she had any actual means of supporting them. She simply abandoned herself to divine providence and trusted in God. God in turn honored her trust.

     One day a Sister reported to Mother that a wine merchant refused to sell them any more wine until their past due account was paid in full. Mother asked the Sister to look in her pockets for some money. She did but they were empty. Mother said, “Look again.” So, in obedience the Sister did so and amazingly she found the exact amount to settle the account. On another occasion, a Sister reported that there was no milk or bread. Mother said, “Take another look.” She did so and found sufficient milk and bread. However, these miracles were rare and most often the community suffered, sacrificed and relied on God’s providence through natural means.

     Francesca built on the nature of her young postulants who wanted to serve Christ. They were simple country girls, not educated intellectuals or mystical contemplatives. She prepared them for the hard work that she had already experienced in caring for and teaching young girls and orphans. Their rule was to say the Little Office, meditate, be humble and obedient and trust in divine providence. Mother took as her motto the words of St. Paul, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

     The young postulants recognized in Mother a spiritual leader who could lead them to perfection as religious missionaries. She was a loving mother in forming them and they did not fail her expectations that they would love and serve God as she did.

     The miracles that God brought through Mother strengthened her postulant’s faith in her leadership. Often they saw her face glow in a heavenly radiance when she was in prayer. One night, the Sister who shared her bedroom awoke to see it filled with light. She called out to Mother, “Did you see it?” “Yes”, she calmly replied, “It’s nothing. Go to sleep.”

     Another time a Sister was advised by a doctor to wear elastic stockings to relieve the suffering from her varicose veins. Instead, she obtained a pair of Mother’s cotton stockings, put them on and was instantly cured. She told this to Mother who said, “I hope that you are not so foolish to say that my stockings cured you. I wear them all the time and they do me no good. It was your faith that did it. Say nothing about it.”

     Mother branched out in Lombardy and opened two more houses for young girl students and orphans. In 1884, she opened a home for girl students in Milan who attended the post-secondary schools there. Since Mother had visions of a worldwide ministry, she wanted to establish a house in Rome as its center and she wanted papal approval of her diocesan Institute. Monsignor Serrati’s response was, “Rome? Mother, are you mad? You should leave this sort of thing to the saints! Milan was a success it is true, but Rome is another story. So you want to make a laughing-stock of yourself and your Institute?”

                                    The Great Commission

     Mother traveled to Rome in 1887 at the age of 37, seven years after the founding of her community. She had an audience with the Pope’s Vicar, Cardinal Parocchi, and explained her plans. He said that it would take more time to approve the rule of her Institute and there was no need of another convent in Rome. He urged her to return to Codogno. His advice was prudent since Mother had only a short history of her Institute and no financial means to start a new house in Rome. He said, “Mother, I advise you to return to Codogno for now, and in a year or two we will see about opening a house in Rome.”

     Mother boldly asked the Cardinal to show her rule to the Holy Father himself. That surprised him so much that he later did it. Mother left him, entered a nearby church and prayed that God would remove the obstacles to establishing her house in Rome. A few days later, the Cardinal summoned her to another interview. Surprisingly, he asked her if she was ready to obey. She said, “Of course, your Eminence, always.” “Then,” he said, “you will not open one house in Rome but two.”

     Mother agreed to establish a kindergarten and a school for the poor and agreed that she would be responsible for most of the costs. Pope Leo XIII dispensed with the usual formalities and approved her rule without many changes. Her diocesan Institute was approved by Rome on March 12, 1888.

     While Mother was in Rome, she learned from Bishop Scalabrini of Piacenza, about the plight of the Italian immigrants in the United States. He was the Founder of the Scalabrini Fathers who ministered to them. He asked Mother if her community would go to the United States to help these few priests work with the immigrants. There was insufficient work for the men in Italy and many of them had immigrated to the States to seek work. There were over a million of them who lived in ghettos, worked at low-paying menial jobs and had no priests, teachers or doctors to care for them or the orphans.

     When the immigrants arrived in the States, they faced minority discrimination, a language barrier in communicating for their daily needs and, more importantly, for their spiritual needs. Immigration endangered their faith since there were hardly any Italian-speaking priests or nuns in the States. There was a great need to educate their children, to take charge of the orphans and to conduct hospitals that would care for them. Mother later said, “They had to come to the United States to earn a living. But what breaks my heart is to see how often they think of nothing else.” Nevertheless, Mother declined Bishop Scalabrini’s request. She still had her eyes on China but the plight of the Italian immigrants predisposed her to abandon her dream of going there.

     The following year Mother returned to Rome. Early in 1889 she knelt before Pope Leo XIII and told him of her ambition to go to China. He shook his head and said, “No, not to the East but to the West, a great field awaits you in America.” The Holy Father personally gave her his great commission. He entrusted to Mother the great need of the Italian immigrants – a superhuman task to a little, frail nun with no experience of working outside of the convent in large cities. Mother obediently received her commission from the Holy Father and got ready to leave for New York with six of her Sisters. Bishop Scalabrini promised to make the arrangements with New York’s Archbishop Michael Corrigan.

                                    The Mission Is Established

     Mother arrived in New York on March 31, 1889 with six sisters and 1500 Italian immigrants on the ship Bourgogne. It was the end of an eight-day stormy voyage over the Atlantic from Le Havre, France on an old and slow ship. They found their way to a shabby hotel in Chinatown and spent the night there. It was the closest that Mother would ever get to China. Weak and exhausted from the crossing, the Sisters spent the night on chairs in order to avoid the vermin-infested beds. This was a frightening change of pace for the Sisters. New York was a busy metropolitan city unlike rural Italy. They were strangers in a strange land. The next morning they went to see Archbishop Corrigan.

     Without the Archbishop’s authority, a benefactress had rented a building and arranged for the Sisters to open an orphanage in mid-town Manhattan. He didn’t think that it was a suitable location since the immigrants needed help in their own section. Moreover, he had no place for them to stay and no funds to help them. He had written Mother a letter to that effect but she didn’t receive it. So, he advised Mother to return to Italy.

     Mother was stunned but simply told the Archbishop of the Pope’s commission. She said, “No, your Excellency, this I cannot do. I came here by order of the Holy Father, and here I must stay.” “All right”, the Archbishop replied, “you may open a day school but no orphanage.” He then took Mother and her sisters to a convent of the Sisters of Charity across the street from the Cathedral and requested the Superior to provide them with food and shelter.

     During the next three weeks, Mother prayed, begged and taught the children at St. Joachim’s Church administered by the Scalabrini Fathers. Her humility, obedience and perseverance earned the Archbishop’s admiration and he soon approved Mother’s request to open the orphanage.

     In a great sign of reconciliation and peace, the Archbishop personally went to the convent on Palm Sunday carrying the palm branch that he had carried during the procession in the Cathedral and he presented it to Mother. The orphanage began on May 3 with a Mass celebrated by the Archbishop. Mother closed the orphanage a year later because the Bishop’s prudential judgment proved correct. It was an unsuitable location.

     Mother left New York on July 20 to attend to some business in Codogno. This was the second of what was to become twenty-five crossings of the Atlantic. These crossings were dangerous. Once her ship met such a great storm that it was forced to dock for repairs in the North Atlantic. Her faith in God’s providence and the confidence with which she confronted the storm earned her the name from the crew of “The Good Sailor”.

     On another voyage, her ship encountered such fierce storms that the Captain even confided his worries to Mother. In order to maintain her footing, she remained on the ship floor, held onto a settee and called aloud encouragements to the passengers. When the danger had passed, the passengers organized a concert and the Sisters sang two hymns they composed.

     After her return to New York from Codogno, Mother occasionally accompanied the Archbishop when he administered the sacrament of Confirmation. On one of these occasions, he pointed across the Hudson River from upstate Peekskill and said, “Now there is where you should be.” The Jesuits ran a novitiate there named “Manressa”. Mother had had a dream in which she saw her first house in the States. When she saw “Manressa”, she recognized it as the house of her dream. Somehow she raised the money to purchase it, re-named it “West Park” and moved the orphans into it.

     In the meantime, her Sisters were working in Manhattan’s East Side in ”Little Italy” teaching in St. Joachim’s church building since there was no school building. They taught amongst the interruptions and distractions of the use of the church for prayer and liturgies. Mother never waited until everything was perfectly in place before she started working. The work was more important than the means. She started and worked with whatever was available. Soon, benefactors came to her aid and praised her for her works. She simply replied, “I am merely watching God perform wonders through us.”

     Mother than sailed back to Italy and returned to New York with twenty-nine Sisters. They brought the total of Mother’s nuns in the United States to fifty. She sailed for Nicaragua on October 10, 1890 to continue her commission to the Americas given to her by Pope Leo XIII. She opened a school there on December 3 but was driven out of the country a few days later. She went on to Panama but was also forced out of there by revolutionaries. She went on to Buenos Aires. In the spring of 1892, she returned to the United States and founded a house in New Orleans. Then she returned to New York where she established Columbus Hospital.

    The Scalabrini Fathers asked her to take charge of a small hospital for them. They had mismanaged it and incurred debts that they wanted Mother to assume while they remained in control. Rather than take on the burden of the hospital, Mother prudently and charitably took on the burden of the patients. She removed them from the Scalabrinis’ hospital and took them to a new one of her own. She begged and received $250 and used it to rent a house. She bought old beds and made the mattresses for them herself. She bought food at a restaurant and warmed it on the stove. A doctor donated some medical equipment and his services and Columbus Hospital was founded. It was named in honor of the Italian hero, Christopher Columbus. In 1892 they celebrated the fourth centenary of his discovery of the New World.

     In late 1892, she was back in Italy where she remained for nearly two years begging and working. She even begged from Pope Leo XII who gave her $1000 from his own private funds.

     In 1894, she returned to New York and from there went to South America again. On her way, she visited her sisters in Panama. Then she sailed to Chile, crossed the Andes Mountains on the back of a mule and arrived at Buenos Aires where she opened an academy on March 1, 1896.

     In 1899 Mother was back in the United States and established Catholic schools in the cities of New York, Newark, Scranton, Chicago and Denver. She opened an orphanage in Arlington, New Jersey and established Mother Cabrini High School in New York City.

     In 1903 Mother went to Chicago to found another Columbus Hospital. She begged for funds and purchased a former hotel. Before the closing, she prudently inspected the boundaries. She measured them with a knotted string and discovered that the sellers tried to cheat her out of owning a 25-foot wide strip of land. She got title to the full plot but was cheated by the contractors during the construction remodeling. She was overcharged for poor workmanship. She fired the contractors and became her own contractor, hired her own workers, supervised their work and completed the project four months earlier than the estimate of the original contractors.

     From 1900 to 1908 she visited Buenos Aires twice and founded two houses in Argentina and two houses in Brazil. She also returned to Europe and established convents in Paris, at Brockley, England and in and near Madrid and Bilbao, Spain. She even had an audience with the Queen of Spain who provided her a good house and furnishings and asked her to be the personal governess of her children. She declined this but opened a house for the daughters of the upper classes. The order expanded very rapidly and had increased to over a thousand sisters with houses in eight countries by 1908.

     Mother opened a mission for the Italian miners in Colorado. She went down into the mineshafts with them and walked the tunnels. She talked with them outside their camp shacks and built them a chapel for their Masses.

     In 1909 she was back in Chicago to establish an extension of Columbus Hospital. Local people tried to sabotage the project. They tried to scare her away because they thought that their property values would decline. They cut the water pipes in mid-winter and caused ice to form inside. Later they tried to set the place on fire. Mother defended her property by moving her patients in before the completion of the project. “These people,” she said, “are not likely to go so far as to murder helpless patients and the Sisters in their beds.” The hospital was completed without incident. In the same year Mother finally became a United States citizen in Seattle.

                                                Mother for Life

     In 1910 when she was 60 years old, sick and tired, Mother went to Rome and requested permission to retire. Unknown to her, her Sisters had collected ballots from the Sisters throughout the world and voted her as Mother for Life. They told this to the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. He declined Mother’s request and smilingly told her, “Mother Cabrini, since you have done such a poor job in governing your sisterhood so far, I have decided to give you another chance, in the hope that you will do better in the future. You are to remain the Superior General!” She was now Mother for Life. She left Rome in 1912 for the last time.

     Early in 1913 she went to Seattle to establish an orphanage. She had a dream of a house for her orphanage. She saw a beautiful house on a hilltop. The next day Mother and some Sisters were walking when Mother waved down a chauffeur-driven limousine and asked for a ride. The woman in the limousine was happy to help the Sisters and gave them one. As they drove, Mother told her about the house of her dream. When they later arrived at the convent and were saying goodbye, the woman told Mother, "Mother Cabrini, that house you dreamed of is mine, I own it. I never thought of parting with it, but if I may be allowed to enter your Holy House for a moment and receive a glass of water in the name of Our Lord, your little orphans shall have their home with my blessing." When asked later how she had obtained such a beautiful property, Mother said, “I paid for it with three treasures: my love, a dream, and a glass of water in His Name."

     In 1904 Mother established the Queen of Heaven Orphanage in Denver, Colorado. It was located in a residential neighborhood. Mother desired a rural property to give her orphans recreation in a natural outdoor environment. So in 1910, she purchased some rural land on the east slope of Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado. A farming operation with poultry, dairy cows and other livestock was established and maintained by three of the Sisters. During the summer months girls from the inner-city orphanage came to enjoy several weeks of freedom at the farm.

     On her last visit to the site in 1912, Mother Cabrini gathered some white stones and formed an outline of the Sacred Heart on the highest point on Lookout Mountain, overlooking the city of Denver. In April, 1948 a 22-foot statue of Christ was mounted on an 11-foot base at the site, now known as the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, or the Cabrini Shrine.

                        The Fruits of the Missionary Apostolate

     Mother was as pragmatic as a stereotypical American. She got things done in an efficient, quick, economical and productive manner. Her journeys and accomplishments in spite of great difficulties and obstacles are almost unbelievable considering her limited education, lack of business training and experience and her frail health.

     Although she lacked all of these, she was still a shrewd, iron-willed businesswoman when she needed to be. She listened, studied, inspected and contemplated, so that she could find the best location for a new school or orphanage. But these works were mainly the fruits of her prayer. Her prayer was, “Convert me, Jesus, convert me completely to yourself, for if you do not make me a saint, I will not know how to work in your vineyard and will end by betraying your interests, instead of rendering them successful.”

     Her lack of learning and experience did not intimidate her. “Neither science nor speculation has ever made, or ever will make, a saint,” she claimed. “Better to be an idiot capable of love, because in love he will sanctify himself.”

     Mother’s charitable institutions seemed to sprout from nothing in a whirlwind of activity. It was an extraordinary demonstration of her faith and her works of mercy in cooperation with the mighty power and works of God. With no money or means and little help from others, she bought, furnished, staffed and administered hospitals, orphanages, convents and schools. She simply went forward with the means at hand confident that God would supply what was lacking. “Don’t worry,” she would say with a smile, “if I were to think too much about procuring the means, the Lord would withhold his graces.” No obstacle could stop her. “Difficulties, difficulties,” she would say. “They’re merely scarecrows to frighten children!”

     This little frail woman with no higher education or prior business training or experience demonstrated the truth of her motto, the words of St. Paul, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” Fear of sickness did not stop her work. She said, “While I am at work, I am well. I fall sick the instant I stop working.” She wrote in her retreat notes, “O Jesus, I love you very much, so much, so much. I wish to die of love, after a life of complete surrender to God. I love you, my Jesus; I am consumed by your love. Give me a heart as large as the universe. O adorable Heart of Jesus, I am your victim, ready to be sacrificed. Tell me what you wish that I do, and do with me as you will.” Pope Leo XIII once said to her, “Let us work Mother Cabrini, and we will win heaven!” She replied, “I like work so well, I doubt that it would gain any merit for me.”

                                                Interior Life

     Mother’s interior life was the life of a crucified victim soul who practiced the presence of God in a state of constant interior recollection while focused on the present moment abandoned in confidence to God’s providence. She practiced and recommended the “crucifixion of the spirit” against self-will and self-love. She cheerfully endured chronic ill health. Her life was a continuous mortification and self-discipline. She said that we should “walk on thorns and let it not be seen, to love humiliation, to love the Cross.” However, an even quicker way was to fly. She said, “Free yourselves; put on wings and fly. The road to heaven is so narrow, steep and thorny that only by flying can one travel over it.”

     She was also docile to the voice of Jesus and promptly obeyed. She said, “Jesus speaks and passes by. The Sacred Heart of Jesus acts so quickly that I can hardly follow Him.” Her confidence in Jesus was increased by her humility. She said, “I am imperfect and full of failings, what shall I do? Discouragement, anxiety and worry keep us away from our merciful Jesus. It is an offense to the Sacred Heart, this lack of confidence in His love and gracious bounty.”

     All who met Mother received the impression that they were the most important person in the world, and for the moment nothing else mattered to Mother but them. While she talked to them she seemed focused only on them but she was continually in intimate communion with Jesus. She kept an interior cloistered heart in the midst of a bodily whirl of exterior activities.

                                                Rest

     In her lifetime, Mother founded sixty-seven institutions of elementary schools, high schools, hospitals, orphanages and other missions served by 1,500 nuns. She established one institution for every year of her life. “Rest?” she would exclaim, “We will have all eternity to rest. Now let us work.” But all of her work was the fruit of her prayer. She once wrote, “I would become weak and languid and risk losing myself if I were to occupy myself only with exterior things . . . or if I were to be without the sleep of prayer . . . in the heart of my beloved Jesus.”

     Her only rest was on her long sea cruises where she also had the time to write letters to her Sisters. They would read these in recreation for their education, inspiration and entertainment. In 1917 Mother’s health deteriorated. When she was in South America in 1908, she had contracted malaria and its effects were debilitating her. She came back to Chicago from Los Angeles and staggered off the train nearly dead. The Sisters hoped that some rest would strengthen her. On December 22, she wrapped Christmas presents and filled bags of candy for her children. Shortly before noon she died peacefully and quietly while sitting in a chair in her room. Fourteen years after her death, two Sisters went to China and began to work in the country that had originally held Mother’s heart as a child.

     At the time of her death, a long time friend, Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago, recalled the paradox of her dynamic power in so frail a body. He said, “When we contemplate this frail little woman, in the short space of two-score years, recruiting an army of 4,000 women under the banner of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, dedicated to a life of poverty and self-sacrifice, fired by the enthusiasm of the Crusaders of old, burning with love of their fellowmen, crossing the seas, penetrating into unknown lands, teaching them and their children by word and example to become good Christians and law-abiding citizens, befriending the poor, teaching the ignorant, washing the sick, all without hope of reward or recompense here below – tell me, does not all this fulfill the concept of a noble woman?"

     Mother was beatified in 1938 after Pope Pius XI waived the rule requiring a lapse of fifty years after death. She was canonized in 1946. Her feast day is celebrated on November 13 which is the day before the anniversary of the foundation of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

     One of the miracles brought through Mother’s intercession was the complete cure of a baby boy at Columbus Hospital. He was blinded by an overdose of silver nitrite solution poured into his eyes by a careless nurse. His eyes burned out but his eyesight was restored after prayers for Mother’s help.

     A second miracle was the cure of a Sister who was only given days to live. However, after prayers for Mother’s help, she too, was cured and continued to live for another twenty years.

     After her canonization, the Holy Father spoke to some American pilgrims and described Mother Cabrini’s life as “a vast, marvelous epic of struggles and victories. Crossing oceans and continents,” he said, “conquering the world for Christ, she could say, ‘The world is too small to satisfy my desires.’”

     Before he became Pope Pius XI and beatified Mother in 1938, Achilli Ratti once remarked to his housekeeper and asked her a question that applies to everyone. “Did you see that little nun who came for advice here? She has crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than twenty times; she has also founded many institutions of charity in Europe and the Unites States. A great missionary, yes, and a wonderful saint! And what have we done, for the glory of God during our whole lifetime?”

     Mother’s intercession is relevant today particularly with many immigrants still coming to the United States from foreign lands as refugees from persecution, war and famine as well as the immigrants who come illegally from Latin America and the Caribbean as refugees from poverty. Mother wrote in one of her letters a prophecy of her intercession for them and for us,

     In the adorable Heart of Jesus, I can always find you. He is our comfort, our way, our life. To Him I shall confide all your needs. I will speak to Him of each one of you in particular. I know the wants of every one of you. I will take a great interest in you and keep you close to my heart – you may be sure of this.

Highlights

God our Father, you called Frances Xavier Cabrini from Italy
To serve the immigrants of America.
By her example teach us concern for the stranger, the sick, and the frustrated.
By her prayers help us to see Christ
In all the men and women we meet.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Mother Cabrini Shrine is located beyond the foothills of Golden, Colorado. It is a place of prayer, pilgrimage and devotion to Mother Cabrini and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Mother Cabrini High School is the home of the body of Mother Cabrini. It is located under the main altar of the chapel enclosed in glass.

· Maynard, Theodore. Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Cabrini, (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, The Bruce Publishing Co., 1945).

· The Life and Missionary Activity of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, (Quezon City, Claretian Communications, 1996).

· Di Donato, Pietro, Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1991).