SAINT FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI
Foundress
(1850-1917)
Dear to the hearts of American Catholics in many regions of the United States, Saint Frances Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, patroness of immigrants, was the first citizen of the United States to be canonized.
Born in Lombardy, Italy, the youngest of thirteen children, she was
fired with missionary zeal as a little girl, through family reading of
the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. She gave up sweets because
she would also be without them in China, where she aspired to go.
She
earned a teacher’s certificate and applied to two Orders having
missionary houses, but was rejected for reasons of health. Reluctantly,
at the request of her bishop, she tried to save an orphanage and make
of its staff a religious community, but after six hard years the work
collapsed. And Frances, by then thirty years old, initiated her own
missionary community with seven of her associates from the orphanage.
Bishop Scalabrini suggested they work with Italian immigrants,
especially in the United States, as the Congregation of Saint Charles
which he had founded was doing; but Mother Cabrini’s heart was set on
China. She asked counsel of Pope Leo XIII. “Go not to the East,” he
told her, “but to the West.”
Founding schools, hospitals and charitable works of every kind,
she would cross the ocean thirty times, bringing bands of young Italian
Sisters to North and South America. Her amusing community letter,
during her second trip to New York, gives a typical picture of these
missionary voyages: “This morning all the Sisters woke up very ill.
Some of them thought they were going to die... Those who trusted my
words rose and tried to eat, and presently were looking quite well. The
others who thought death was at hand stayed in their rooms awaiting
it...”
Her
letters are filled with the practical motherly instruction of a
foundress who knew she was loved and imitated by her Sisters. “When you
are corrected do not justify yourself. Remain silent and practice
virtue, whether you are right or wrong, otherwise we may dream of
perfection but will never attain it.” (Oct. 17-20, 1892) “Love is not
loved, my daughters! Love is not loved!” (Aug. 21, 1890) “Renounce
yourselves entirely if you wish to enjoy peace... She who is not holy
will make no one holy.” (Oct. 17, 1892)
Explaining
why she did not accompany some Sisters on a boat excursion she wrote,
“I admit my weakness, I am afraid of the sea. And if there is no very
holy motive in view, I have no courage to go where I fear danger,
unless sent by obedience. For then, of course, one’s movements are
blessed by God.”
Mother
Cabrini died at sixty-seven, suddenly and alone in one of her Chicago
hospitals, while preparing Christmas presents for 500 children.
Source: Lives of the Saints: Daily Readings, by Augustine Kalberer, O.S.B. (Franciscan Herald Press: Chicago, 1975).
For more information, please refer to Mother Cabrini Shrine.
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