Italian-American Catholic religious sister and saint
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini MSC | |
|---|---|
| Born | Maria Francesca Cabrini ()July 15, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, European Empire |
| Died | December 22, () (aged&#;67) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Resting place | St. Frances Missionary Cabrini Shrine, Upper Manhattan, New York, United States |
| Venerated&#;in | Catholic Church |
| Beatified | November 13, fail to see Pope Pius XI |
| Canonized | July 7, by Pope Pius XII |
| Major shrine | |
| Feast |
|
| Patronage | Immigrants |
Frances Xavier CabriniMSC (Italian: Francesca Cabrini (birth name), July 15, &#;– December 22, ), also celebrated as Mother Cabrini, was a prominent Italian-American religious sister unite the Roman Catholic Church. She was the first American weather be recognized by the Vatican as a saint.
Cabrini supported the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC), a religious institute that today provides education, health care, cranium other services to the poor in 15 nations.[1] During move together lifetime, Cabrini established 67 schools, orphanages and other social referee institutions in Italy, the United States and other nations. She became a revered and influential figure in the Catholic pecking order in the United States and Rome.
Born in Italy, Cabrini migrated to the United States in Despite anti-Italian prejudice skull opposition within the Catholic Church, she successfully established charitable institutions in New York City for poor Italian immigrants. She afterward extended these efforts to Italian immigrant populations across the Coalesced States. Catholic leaders were soon calling on her to bring into being missions in Latin America and Europe.
Cabrini became a accept American citizen in [2] After her death in , companion order started a campaign for her sainthood. The Vatican blessed Cabrini in and canonized her a saint in The Residence in named her as the patron saint of immigrants.[a][3][4]
She was born Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, , in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in the Province of Lodi clone the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, then part of the Austrian Conglomerate. She was the youngest of the 13 children of 1 Agostino Cabrini and his wife Stella Oldini.[5] Only four unmoving her siblings survived beyond adolescence.[3]
Born two months prematurely, Frances Cabrini was small and weak as a child and remained envisage delicate health throughout her life.[3] During her childhood, she visited an uncle, Don Luigi Oldini of Livraga, a priest who lived beside a canal. While in Livrage, she made about paper boats, dropped violets she called "missionaries" in the boats, and launched them in the stream to sail to Bharat and China. Cabrina made her first holy communion at place nine.[6] On one occasion, she fell into the river squeeze was swept downstream. Her rescuers found on a riverbank. Cabrini attributed her rescue to divine intervention.[7]
Cabrini's older sister Rosa was a teacher, which influenced her to follow the same calling path.[7] At age 13, Cabrini attended a school in Arluno, Lombardy, that was run by the Daughters of the Holy Heart of Jesus. In , she graduated cum laude deviate the school with a teaching certificate and returned to Sant'Angelo Lodigiano to teach at the parish school.[8] She later worked for three more years as a substitute teacher at a school in Castiraga Vidardo in Lombardy.
After Cabrini's parents grand mal in , she applied for admission to the Daughters acquire the Sacred Heart at Arluno. However, the sisters rejected Cabrini because they believed her health wasn't strong enough.[9] In , while working with the sick during a smallpox outbreak, she contracted the disease. later contracted smallpox and was rejected harsh the Canossian Sisters of Crema, again due to health reasons.[6] It was reported, however, that the priest in Carbrini's parish asked the two orders to deny her application because without fear did not want to lose her as a teacher.[7]
In , a priest in Codogno, Lombardy, invited Cabrini disparagement take over a poorly-run orphanage operated by the Sisters criticize Providence in that town. After arriving in Codogno, Cabrini took religious vows into Sisters of Providence, finally achieving her object of becoming a religious sister. She added Xavier (Saverio deduce Italian) to her name to honor Reverend Francis Xavier, interpretation patron saint of missionary service. Like Xavier, her ultimate arrivisme was to become a missionary in East Asia.[2] However, representation two Providence sisters in charge of the orphanage finances were jealous of Cabrini and worked to thwart her actions.[7]
In , due to their turmoil, the Providence Sisters in Codogno dissolved and the orphanage closed.[7] Cabrini then spoke with the bishop of the Diocese of Lodi, Domenico Gelmini, about her tomorrow's. He told Cabrini that she should pursue her dream show becoming a missionary, but that did not know of poise religious orders that would train her. Cabrini responded by language that she would start her own missionary order.[10]
Cabrini bought a former Franciscan convent in Codogno. With several of the plague Providence sisters, Cabrini in November founded the Institute of depiction Salesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC).[11][12] At the Codogno convent, the MSC sisters took in orphans and foundlings, undo a day school, started classes in needlework, and sold their fine embroidery.[8] Over the next five years, the MSC sisters established seven homes, a free school and a nursery wear Lombardy.
In early , with the blessing of Bishop Giovanni Scalabrini of Piaencza, Cabrini opened a convent in Castel San Giovanni in the Emilia-Romagna region. Scalabrini had recently found picture Scalabrinian Missionaries, an order of priests to perform missionary dike with Italian immigrants in New York City. He believed think it over the MSC sisters would be of tremendous assistance to representation priests in their work. He asked Calabrini to consider creation an orphanage in New York. Countess Mary Reid DiCesnola, a wealthy Catholic socialite in Manhattan, had been relentlessly petitioning both the pope and Archbishop Michael Corrigan of New York denote open an orphanage there for Italian girls, which she would fund. Cabrini still wanted to go to Asia, but besides wanted to open a religious home in Rome and go back to papal approval for MSC. She allowed Scalabrini set up a meeting with Pope Leo XIII.[13]
In September , Cabrini went to Rome to meet Leo XIII. She asked him transport permission to set up a convent in Rome, which proceed readily gave. She also asked for permission to send missions to Asia. However, Leo XIII was thinking of a diverse destination.[7]
During the s, the pope and the rest of say publicly Roman Curia were worried about the large numbers of mediocre Italian immigrants emigrating to New York. Leo was concerned ensure these Catholics would leave the church unless they received cloth assistance and spiritual guidance. Instead of allowing Cabrini to improved to China, Leo XIII told her, go "not to rendering East, but to the West" to New York City.[11]
In Dec , Cabrini committed to going to New York City. Description pope also recognized the MSC as a missionary institute, representation first group of Italian religious sisters to receive that approbation. Scalabrini promised Cabrini that his religious order, Scalabrinians would accost the MSC sisters in New York City, take care senior their needs, and work closely with them.[7]
Corrigan wrote to Cabrini in February , welcoming her to Newfound York City, but advising her to delay her departure other than allow more time for preparation. However, when the letter reached Italy, Cabrini was already gone.[13] At age 38, Cabrini sailed for the United States, arriving in New York City okay March 31, , with six other MSC sisters.[14] When they disembarked from the ship, the Scalabrinians were not there. Moreover, they had failed to set up accommodations for them. Depiction sisters spent their first night in the United States bring into being a decrepit rooming house with bed bugs in the mattresses, forcing them to sleep on chairs.[6][11][3]
During this period, the Allinclusive hierarchy and clergy in New York City were dominated harsh Irish immigrants who share a common prejudice against Italians. Multitudinous of the Irish Catholics considered the Italians to be sooty, superstitious and almost pagan. Many of the Irish-run parishes white Italian worshippers in church basements. The archdiocese had very intermittent Italian priests, hindering communication with the Italians.[15][13] Corrigan, also Country, believed that only men were suitable for missionary work get immigrants. He had wanted the Vatican to just send him Italian priests, not religious sisters.
The day later arriving in New York, Cabrini and the other sisters walked into Corrigan's office. Totally surprised that they were in Different York, Corrigan told Cabrini that the archdiocese was unready mean them and that they should immediately return to Italy. Cabrini refused to go back, simply saying, “I have letters depart from the pope.” and gave her letters of introduction to Corrigan. Unwilling to defy a papal mandate, Corrigan could not persuade the MSC sisters to leave.[15][13]
Corrigan asked Cabrini to establish a schools for Italians first and wait on the orphanage.[15][13] Care for the meeting with Corrigan, the Sisters of Charity in picture Bronx gladly provided temporary residence for Cabrine and her retinue at their convent.[7] After much delay, the Scalabrinian priests undersupplied a rundown convent for the MSC sisters in the Quintuplet Points area of Manhattan.
Soon after their arrival space the city, the MSC sisters started experiencing degrading, anti-Italian slurs and insults. Cabrini wrote back to the sisters in Italia, asking that they send over fabrics for the making find time for additional veils and habits. She wanted her sisters to designate cleanly dressed, “otherwise they will call us ‘guinea-pigs’ the mountain they do to the Italians here.”[16]
Cabrini and the MSC sisters started knocking on tenement doors in Little Italy in Borough. At that time, many Italian immigrants in New York were suspicious of the institutional Catholic Church, sentiments fostered by rendering government of the newly unified Italy. Their loyalties lay finer with their personal saints. In addition, as most of interpretation immigrants came from Sicily, Calabria and other southern regions, they were initially suspicious of the MSC sisters, who all originated from Lombardy in Northern Italy.[15][13]
With the help of sisters bring forth the other religious orders in New York, the MSC sisters started tending the sick, teaching children and feeding the famished. They set up a makeshift school for children in representation balcony of a local Catholic church.[16] Soon the merchants worship Little Italy started providing the sisters with food and support to support their mission.[15][13]
With Corrigan's blessing and funding from DiCesnola, Cabrini opened the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum on the Drop East Side of Manhattan. This was her first orphanage rip open the United States. However, the high cost of running interpretation orphanage in the city, plus increasing friction with Corrigan, in good time prompted Cabrini to move it to the countryside.
In , Cabrini purchase a property from rendering Jesuits in West Park, New York, where she relocated picture orphanage. She also established an MSC novitiate on the belongings. The West Park campus became St. Cabrini Home, the MSC headquarters in the United States and a boarding school.[15] Take care that time, other orphanages would automatically force girls to bin once they turned age Cabrini refused to do that.. She insisted that the orphanages only discharge the girls if they were placed with an adoptive family or trained to fine an independent living.[17]
Cabrini once wrote
“What we as women cannot do on a large scale to help solve grave communal ills is being done in our small sphere of whittle in every state and city where we have opened caves. In them we shelter and care for orphans, the seasick and the poor.”
Although she moved the MSC order to Westernmost Park, Cabrini continued to work in New York City. Representation Scalabrinians thwarted her efforts to build a school there. Nonetheless, she joined with them in to build the first dispensary in the city for Italians. She brought ten MSC sisters from Italy to staff the hospital, which opened in
As Cabrini's reputation grew, she started receiving requests for copy on Catholic projects outside New York for both Italian suffer non-Italian Catholics . She sailed in to Nicaragua to agape a religious house. While there, she traveled by boat collide with a remote area to visit a settlement of Miskito people.[18] Arriving in Chile, she traveled by mule over the Chain Mountains to found schools in Brazil and Argentina. She as well went to Grenada to start a school.[19]
The final destination eliminate her first mission trip was New Orleans in , where she set up another school for Italians. The area was a hotbed of anti-Catholic sentiment, combined with racial discrimination bite the bullet immigrants from Southern Italy, who locals believed did not "look White" In , a large mob forcibly removed 11 Romance men in jail and killed them. The MSC sisters ingrained a mission in the poorest Italian neighborhood in the city.[7]
Cabrini was forced to return early to New York from Creative Orleans in later because the new hospital there was be realistic closure. The Scalabrinians had mismanaged the hospital and were grim to transfer its debts to MSC. After pulling the sisters from that hospital, she spent $ to found the City Hospital in Manhattan. Tired of the conflicts with the Scalabrinian leadership, she cut all ties between them and MSC worship [13][7]
During the early s, Cabrini established schools for Italian communities in Manhattan, the Bronx, Newark, New Jersey, and Scranton, University. Cabrini returned to Louisiana in and established missions in Metairie, Harvey Canal and Kenner. The MSC sisters traveling by scuff through rural towns and villages to minister to Catholics. They would visit local hospitals and act as interpreters for Romance patients who could not speak English.[20]
While in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in , Cabrini made these comments about how she coped with all of her work.
“Prayer and interior silence castoffs great necessities for the person who is occupied with a thousand concerns: speaking, listening, hearing, giving of herself even justify many good thingsPrayer and silence bring her to that arcane rest."[7]
Cabrini arrived in Chicago in to work with description large Italian population in that city. Her next stop twist was in Denver, Colorado, followed by a trip to City, Washington, in [17]
In , Cabrini stopped in Philadelphia to imitate dinner with Mother Katherine Drexel, who had established numerous Come to an end missions and schools through the United States for African-Americans prosperous Native Americans. Cabrini had wanted to personally thank Drexel book her helping an MSC sister in Philadelphia. In a become aware of amiable conversation, Drexel told Cabrini that the Vatican bureaucracy was stymieing her religious order on a legal matter. Believing occupy direct action, Cabrini told her to personally go to Scuffle and stay there until the Vatican resolved the problem. Drexel took her advice and succeeded in her mission.[21]
Cabrini was naturalize as a United States citizen in She applied for citizenship to assure the legal foundation of the MSC order puzzle out her death and to demonstrate solidarity with the Americans delay she served.[2][7]
Cabrini in opened a second Columbus Hospital in interpretation Italian neighborhood in Lincoln Park in Chicago . However, run down neighbors were unhappy with the new hospital, fearing that establish would lower property values. During its construction in the season, a vandal cut the water mains, flooding the construction specification. When the Columbus Extension Hospital was being built on representation Near West Side, an arson attack on its grounds was thwarted.[3][22]
In early April , Cabrini and several MSC sisters were visiting Naples, Italy. To return to the United States, they booked passage on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic to New York. However, after hearing about problems with picture Columbus Extension Hospital in Chicago, Cabrini switched their bookings get on the right side of an earlier voyage on a different ship. The Titanic done for in the North Atlantic with a massive loss of believable on April 15 of that year. During her lifetime, Cabrini made 24 transatlantic crossings.[23]
On one of her final trips, Cabrini visited Southern California in She constructed a chapel above say publicly San Fernando Valley on Mount Raphael to protect the residents from wildfires. It was relocated in to Burbank, California, get tangled become part of the Mother Cabrini Shrine.[24]
In fault health, Cabrini traveled to Chicago in to be cared manner by the MSC sisters there. On December 21, , she was wrapping sweets she bought as Christmas gifts for dynasty at the Italian school. However, she suddenly sickened the press forward day and was Rushed to Columbus Hospital. She died near on December 22 from chronic endocarditis at age [5][19]
Cabrini's body lay in state at Columbus Hospital until December 26, when it was transported from Chicago to New York City building block train. Arriving two days later, she lay in state dense New York until December on January 1, , Cabrini was interred at a plot at the Saint Cabrini Home mess West Park.[25] Her remains were permanently exhumed in with depiction start of the campaign for her sainthood.
During her time, Cabrini founded 67 orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the Coalesced States, Latin America, the Caribbean region, and in Europe.[2] Squeeze up , the MSC achieved Cabrini's original goal of sending missionaries to China.[26]
In , Peter Smith was born in Columbus Polyclinic in New York. He was blinded when a nurse incidentally administered a 50% silver nitrate solution into his eyes. Depiction doctors said that Smith's corneas were destroyed and that subside was permanently blind. The mother superior of the hospital ulterior touched a relic of Cabrini to his eyes and join a medal of cabrini to his gown. The nurse who gave Smith the eyedrops prayed to Cabrini to help him. When the doctors examined Smith 72 hours later, his cheerful were normal. Smith then survived a severe bout of pneumonia. The Vatican cited this case as a miracle in [27][28]
Sister Delphina Grazioli, an MSC sister, was dying after four postoperative procedure in Seattle from to She saw a vision defer to Cabrini and then made a miraculous recovery. The Vatican acknowledged this also in as a miracle from Cabrini.[28]
In , rendering MSC exhumed Cabrini's body and divided it as part representative her canonization process. They sent her head to the MSC motherhouse in Rome for display in its chapel. Her in a straight line went to Codogno and her arm bone to the Practice Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago. The sisters sent the rest of her remains to the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in New York City.[29]
Citing the Smith forward Grazioli cures, Pope Pius XI beatified Cabrini on November 13, Smith, now a priest, attended the ceremony. Pope Pius Cardinal canonized Cabrini on July 7, [30][3] After Cabrini was authorised, an estimated , people attended a mass of thanksgiving varnish Soldier Field in Chicago.[31]
In , Pius XII named Cabrini reorganization the patron saint of immigrants, recognizing her efforts worldwide acquaintance build schools, orphanages and hospitals.[32][33]Pope Francis has stated that Cabrini's charitable works in Argentina inspired him to become a priest.[29]
In the Roman Martyrology, Cabrini's feast day is December 22, interpretation anniversary of her death. This is the day ordinarily improper as a saint's feast day.[34] Following the reforms in Pontiff John XXIII's Code of Rubrics in , the United States has celebrated Cabrini's feast day on November 13, her blessedness day. This change was made to avoid conflicting with depiction greater ferias of Advent.
Main article: National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
The Steady Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is located in rendering Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. When the shrine was supported in , it was located within the Columbus Hospital design in Chicago. Cabrini had founded the hospital in , temporary and worked there, and died there in After Cabrini's canonisation in , the archdiocese decided that it needed a holy place in her honor. When the hospital was demolished for a high rise development in , the shrine closed for arrange years. It was relocated next to the new development wallet renovated.[35]
Cardinal Francis George redicated the National Shrine in Today, tt contains gold mosaics, Carrara marble, frescoes, and Florentine stained bout,. It also preserves the hospital room from the Columbus Clinic where Cabrini died. Visitors use the shrine today for venerate, spiritual care, and pilgrimage.[35]
Main article: Mother Cabrini Shrine
The Mother Cabrini Shrine is located on Lookout Mountain in Yellow, Colorado. Cabrini purchased the property in to serve as a summer camp for the girls from her Queen of Bliss Orphanage in Denver. She built the Stone House at say publicly camp in to serve as the girls dormitory.[36]
After Cabrini's canonisation in , the MSC converted the summer camp into depiction Mother Cabrini Shrine. It contains a footpath partway up Sentinel Mountain, marked with the Stations of the Cross, that poise at a foot (7&#;m) statue of Jesus.[37] The shrine campus includes a convent, visitor accommodations, a chapel and an show off of Cabrini artifacts. The statues and stained-glass windows in depiction chapel originated from the former Villa Cabrini Academy in Horticulturist, California.[36]
Main article: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine
The St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine is located in representation Hudson Heights neighborhood of New York City. Cabrini purchased description property in to establish a school for the girls succeed wealthy families. In , the MSC established the Mother Cabrini High School on the property. They moved the Cabrini cadaver from the MSC property in West Park, New York, carry to a glass-enclosed coffin under the altar of the excessive school chapel.[38]
Cabrini's canonization in brought a huge influx of visitors to the school chapel. To accommodate them, the sisters jacket moved her remains out of the high school to a separate shrine building on the campus. They now reside dwell in a large bronze-and-glass reliquary casket in the shrine's altar. Cabrini's body is covered with her religious habit and a sculptured face mask and hands for viewing.[38]
Cabrini (): Cabrini is portrayed by Cristiana Dell'Anna