Bio

 

 Named Maria Francesca at birth, she was born in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, which was then part of the Austrian Empire and is now part of Italy. The youngest of 13, she was only one of four children to survive into adulthood, but remained sick and frail for her whole life. Her father was a farmer, but her uncle was a priest, and she visited him often when she was young. On these visits, she would play by a canal, making paper boats that she filled with violets she called “missionaries”, and would send them off to places like China and India. She was once caught in the stream and nearly drowned, but was miraculously rescued.

    She decided to become a teacher, like her older sister had, so at 13 she went to a school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She taught at her home village’s parish school until her parents died, and then she decided she wanted to join the religious order that had taught her. She was denied, supposedly due to her poor health, and after contracting smallpox and applying to another order, she was denied again. It is possible that this happened because her local priest asked the orders not to let her in, since he needed her to remain a teacher. So, instead, when asked by another priest to teach at an orphanage in Lombardy, she agreed, and was accepted into the Sisters of Providence order that ran the school. Because she still dreamed of being a missionary one day, she took the name Xavier after St. Francis Xavier. Two of the other sisters at the school were jealous of her ambitions, and meddled with her plans, causing the entire orphanage to shut down by 1880. At that time, however, the Bishop of Lodi encouraged her to become a missionary, but could not think of a group that could train her.

    Frances made her own way, then, by purchasing a former convent and beginning her own group with some of the other former sisters and girls from the school. They became the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, opening their own school and home for orphans, sustaining themselves by selling embroidery and teaching classes. In just five years, the sisters opened another school and seven more homes in Lombardy. She wrote the rule for her new Order, and when she went to the Pope, hoping to go to China, he asked her to go instead to the US and administer to Italian immigrants who were being treated poorly and suffering. With a small group of sisters, she sailed for New York. The Italian population there was discriminated against, even by clergy, and Bishop Scalabrini of Piacenza who had asked priests to do the same missionary work hoped Mother Cabrini’s group could aid them, and perhaps even open an orphanage. She ran into a number of setbacks - the Scalabrian priests were not there, the home she was to purchase for the orphanage was no longer available, and there was no house for the sisters, forcing them to sleep in an infested rooming home. The Bishop, Michael Corrigan, was part of the Irish Catholic groups that were biased against the Italians, and he also did not believe women were fit for the missionary work, even advising her to go back to Italy. She and the sisters soon became victims of the ill-treatment of the immigrants, themselves, and of suspicion from many of the immigrants who were mostly from different regions in Italy than hers. She persisted, however, and was able to offer classes, care for the sick, and provide food for the hungry. She set up a school and an orphanage, which, notably, did not stick to tradition and discharge girls at age 14. Though the Scalabrians had proven enemies against some of her efforts, she was able to work with them to open the first hospital for Italians in 1891, since they could be refused at others. 

    Mother Cabrini suffered from illnesses for the majority of her life, but this did not stop her from spending another 35 years setting up 67 institutions all over the world. She traveled by boat and mule to set up locations in South America, and then went to New Orleans, where there was strong anti-Catholic sentiment and racism towards Southern Italians.11 of these immigrants were killed by a mob. Mother Cabrini had to return to New York early from this trip because the Scalabrians had been mismanaging one of her hospitals. She cut ties with them formally and pulled her sisters to start another separate hospital. 

    In these years, the sisters set up more schools and hospitals, worked as interpreters for patients, She also dealt with enemies, who were afraid her hospitals would lower property values, and vandalized construction. She had booked passage on the Titanic but switched reservations, set up a shrine to protect residents from California wildfires, and she even set up a meeting with St. Katherine Drexel, encouraging her to go directly to the Pope for what she was aspiring to do. St. Katherine did take this advice and succeeded. 
   In 1917, she grew very ill and went to her own hospital in Chicago to be cared for by the sisters. She spent even her last hours wrapping Christmas candy gifts for children, and died on December 22nd.

 
She was canonized in 1946, making her the first canonized saint from the United States. There is a national shrine named for her in Chicago. Her Sisters finally achieved her goal of sending missionaries to China in 1926, and Pope Francis even cited her work in Argentina as one of his inspirations for becoming a priest.