August 2, 2026 - "Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini"

I am writing about Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who was born in a small village south of Milan in 1850.  Frances trained as a schoolteacher and had her heart set upon being a missionary in China.  After being rejected by two congregations because they deemed her too frail to live community life, with her bishop’s assistance, she established a new congregation, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.  A group of women joined the new congregation.  When Mother Cabrini told the local bishop that she hoped her sisters would be missionaries in China, the bishop suggested that they might consider America to be their focus of activity because great numbers of Italian immigrants were crowding the slums of cities in the United States with only a few people to take care of them.  Still uncertain, Mother Cabrini went to an audience with Pope Leo XIII who advised her.” My daughter, your field awaits you not in the East but in the West.” And so, in 1889, Mother Cabrini and six other Missionaries of the Sacred Heart sailed for America.

 

Complications set in even before Mother Cabrini and the other sisters arrived. An Italian Contessa was going to provide funding for the work of the missionaries.  But she quarreled with the Scalabrini Fathers who were going to work with the Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts in caring for the Italian immigrants.  The Contessa withdrew her funding for the mission. The Archbishop of New York was informed that the funding for the sisters’ work was cut off.  When Mother Cabrini met the archbishop for the first time, he told her that there was no money available to help them.  He suggested the best thing would be for Mother Cabrini and the other sisters to take the first boat back to Italy. Mother Cabrini told the archbishop that the Holy Father had asked them to come to America.  She asked him for a three-month trial period.  If she and her sisters had not made satisfactory arrangements within ninety days, then they would return to Italy.  Mother Cabrini was shrewd and resourceful.  The archbishop was pleased with their progress and gave them his blessing to continue their work with Italian immigrants.

 

In the following years, Mother Cabrini and her sisters established schools, orphanages, and hospitals across the United States and in Central and South America. Mother Cabrini personally established more than fifty foundations.  She sailed the ocean at least twenty-four times despite having a strong fear of water after nearly drowning as a child. If Mother Cabrini had not been delayed by business in Chicago in 1912, she would have been a passenger on the Titanic.

 

Mother Cabrini died on December 22, 1917. She was canonized in 1946, with a feast day of November 13.  One of her sayings was “Money we have not, but from our faith will spring forth miracles.”

 

Until next week,

Fr. John