St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
by VP
Posted on Wednesday November 13, 2024 at 12:00AM in Saints
Mother Cabrini and Pope leo XIII
"I will have no peace until I have wrested every last child from Protestant hands."
"We must pray without tiring, for the salvation of mankind does not depend on material success; nor on sciences that cloud the intellect. Neither does it depend on arms and human industries but on Jesus alone." Mother CabriniPrayer: Almighty and Eternal Father, Giver of all Gifts, show us Thy mercy, and grant, we beseech Thee, through the merits of Thy faithful Servant, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, that all who invoke her intercession may obtain what they desire according to the good pleasure of Thy Holy Will...(here name your request).
O Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of the world, mindful of Thy bountiful goodness and love, deign, we implore Thee, through the tender devotion of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini for Thy Sacred Heart, to hear our prayers and grant our petitions.
O God, the Holy Ghost, Comforter of the afflicted, Fountain of Light and Truth, through the ardent zeal of Thy humble handmaid, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, grant us Thy all powerful aid in our necessities, sanctify our souls and fill our minds with Divine Light that we may see the Holy Will of God in all things.
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, beloved spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, intercede for us that the favor we now ask may be granted.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory, etc. (Three times)
Imprimatur: Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago, 1943
Sanctuary of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
These Splendid Sisters: Mother Cabrini An Apostle of the Italians by JAMES J. WALSH, 1926
'If ever there was a social problem so complex as to seem almost hopelessly insoluble and so many-sided as to perplex and bewilder the best intentioned, it was the welfare of the Italian immigrant in this country at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Not only schools for the poor were needed, but for the better classes as well, where they might find sympathy with their national aspirations and character; hospitals also were necessary to prevent the pitiable condition of sufferers coming to dispensaries and city hospitals with little or no knowledge of English and subject to being unfortunately misunderstood to their own detriment. The hard manual labor in which their fathers were engaged, involving numerous accidents, left many orphan children to be cared for, and in a thousand other ways, also, these willing workers bearing so many difficult burdens of the country, demanded sympathetic assistance. The question was where would one begin, and having begun how carry on and diffuse any social work widely enough to cover these needs not alone in the coast cities of the East, but everywhere where the Italian immigrant had gone or had been brought by others.
Many people, even Catholics, feel that very little has been done, especially by Catholics, for the solution of this vast problem, although it mainly concerns our Italian Catholic brethren. Such a thought, however, betrays ignorance of an immense work that has been developing around us during the last twenty years. The recent death of Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini at the Columbus Hospital, Chicago (December, 1917), has emphatically called attention to the fine results secured in this important matter by her congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Not quite seventy when she died, she had established over seventy houses of her religious. Her institute, less than forty years old, numbers its members by thousands. From Italy, where her foundation was made, it has spread to North, South and Central America, as well as France, Spain and England. No wonder that at her death, she was honored by those who knew her work as a modern apostle whose influence for good proved that the arm of the Lord had not been shortened: that He still raised up great personalities to meet the special needs of the Church in all generations.
Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini was born at St. Angelo di Lodi, July 16, 1850. Her parents belonged to the Italian nobility. From her early years she gave evidence of devout piety, and at the age of thirty undertook the organization of a congregation that would devote itself to teaching especially the children of the poor and of training school teachers. Her first house was founded at Codogno in 1880. A series of houses sprang up, during the following years, in and around Milan, and her work having attracted the attention of Leo XIII., she was invited to open a Pontifical School at Rome. This succeeded so admirably, that the Pope saw in it a great agency for the benefit of Italians all over the world. This great Pontiff had been very much attracted by Mother Cabrini's character and her enthusiastic zeal, which overcame obstacles that to many seemed insurmountable.
Accordingly when the foreign missionary spirit developed among her Sisters, Mother Cabrini, knowing the blessing that always accrued to a congregation for missionary work, applied to the Pope for permission to send her Sisters into the Orient. Pope Leo suggested that her mission lay in exactly the opposite direction. He recommended the Americas, North and South, as a fertile field for the labors of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Mother Cabrini, receiving the suggestion as a command from God, proceeded to carry it out. A few months later she embarked for America with her Sisters, and assumed charge of a school for the children of Italian immigrants which was opened in New York in connection with the Church of St. Joachim.
Immigration was then at its height, the social problems of the Italians were at a climax, Americans had scarcely awakened to the need of doing anything, the Italian government was aroused to the necessity of accomplishing something, but politics were blocking the way, and it looked as though a little band of Italian Sisters could accomplish very little. Yet in a few years it became evident that this mustard seed was destined to grow into a large tree whose branches would shelter the birds of the air.
Mother Cabrini very soon realized that despite the importance of teaching, there were other crying needs of our Italian population that must be met if there was to be a solid foundation for the solution of social problems among them. Ailing and injured Italians needed the care that could properly be given them only by their own. Seeing in the celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, then impending, an auspicious moment, Mother Cabrini, in 1892, opened Columbus Hospital in New York. It had an extremely humble beginning in two private houses and with such slender support as would surely have discouraged anything less than the zeal of this foundress, convinced that she was doing God's work on a mission indicated by the Pope himself. Before long, the fortunes of the hospital began to brighten, until now it is one of the recognized institutions of New York, situated in a commodious building that brings it conspicuously to the notice of New Yorkers. Before the outbreak of the War, plans had been drawn for a ten-story building which should have been finished before this, and would have been one of the most complete hospitals in the country.
But Columbus Hospital was only the beginning. Mother Cabrini's great work of schools for Italian children of the poorer and better classes, was not neglected, but it was now evident that hospitals offered the best chance to win back adult Italians who had abandoned their faith and to influence deeply those who could be brought in no other way under Christian influences. After an Italian had been under the care of these devoted Italian Sisters, it was, indeed, hard for him to neglect his religion as before, and many a family returned to the devout practice of the Faith when the father had had his eyes opened to the practical virtues of religion by his stay in the hospital. Hence, in 1905, Columbus Hospital, Chicago, was founded under extremely difficult conditions. For some time the failure of this enterprise seemed almost inevitable, and Reverend Mother Cabrini's heart was heavy at the prospect of her beloved poor deprived of skilled care. She did not lose courage, however, and she was rewarded, after a particularly trying time in which her greatest consolation and help was prayer, the assured future of the hospital.
A little later, a branch hospital known as Columbus Extension Hospital, was established for the very poor in the heart of an Italian district in Chicago, at Lytle and Polk Streets. Five years later, Columbus Hospital and Sanitarium in Denver was founded and a few years later Columbus Hospital, Seattle. All of these were in excellent condition, with abundant promise of future usefulness, and healthy development at the time of Mother Cabrini's death. This holy woman brought to the service of her zeal for religion such good sound common sense and business acumen and efficiency, as to call forth the admiration of all who knew her and who realized what she was accomplishing in the face of unlooked-for and almost insurmountable difficulties.
Municipal and state officials were often staggered at the projects she undertook with apparently utterly inadequate means at her command, but after a struggle and hard work, the abundant success she realized, opened their eyes to the fact that here was not merely an ordinary activity but something so extraordinary as to suggest the assistance of a supernatural agency.
Prominent officials in this country and in Europe, not only in Italy but in France and Spain and England, had learned to admire unstintedly the humble, simple, little Mother of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart who at first appeared a hopeless enthusiast, yet proved on comparatively short acquaintance to be the most practical of women. In explaining how she succeeded in doing things that seemed hopeless to others, she was in the habit of saying: "What do you wish? you men who look at these problems have too much to do, and then you want to do too much all at once. For instance, there is no need of lengthy discussion as to the necessity for protection for immigrants, but what is needed is to put protection for the immigrant into effect. You see I do not discuss, I find that there is a good thing that ought to be done. I set myself and my little institute at work at it at once. I do not despair of finding the means with which to do it. I always feel confident that somehow or other I shall always find them. I do not know quite how it is that I find these, and others do not, but perhaps that is because I am only a little nun whom nobody minds, and therefore perhaps I meet with less opposition and people are
ready to help me." That was all that she was in her own estimation, just "a little nun," but under the modest habit of a nun she possessed a soul constantly open to aspirations and ideals, tenacious of purpose and ready to do anything once she was sure that it would redound to the glory of God by benefiting mankind.
A favorite expression of hers, often repeated to her Sisters and often uttered even in her dealings with secular people, was: "I can do all things in Him that strengthens me." Her entire confidence in God, her utter lack of self-sufficiency, her constant confession that she was but "a poor little nun," bore her triumphantly over all difficulties. Her foundations remind one of St. Teresa's journeys to make her foundations, and of her character and simple-hearted confidence in tackling the most difficult problems under conditions that seemed most forbidding. One recalls the Spanish Saint's reply when told that she was assuming a preposterous task in setting out to found a house of her order with only three ducats at her disposal. The words are famous in the history of religious endeavor: "Teresa and three ducats, can do nothing, but Teresa and three ducats and God can accomplish anything."
Poor St. Teresa made her long journeys either on foot or in an ox-cart. Mother Cabrini's journeys were made under less difficult circumstances, but the length of them probably made them at least as tiresome and trying as those of the Saint three centuries and a half ago. Nothing could give a better idea of the extraordinary vigor and marvelous power of action of the little nun than an account given to one who knew her well: "I came a month ago from South America. I am just setting out for Chicago. After a fortnight there, I expect to go to Los Angeles and probably not long after, I return to the East, from there I shall have to set out for Italy. In the meantime (Carroccio, January, 1918.), however, I must try to make it clear to the Commissioner of Immigration that our Columbus Hospital is giving aid directly to the Italians." At that time the statistics of the hospital showed that over 100,000 Italians had been discharged from it cured.
In the midst of her activities in North America she did not forget that the Pope's recommendation had included all the Americas, and so she voyaged to South America in order to lay foundations there. Schools were founded in Argentina, in Brazil and then in Chile and Peru. Once she made the journey over the mountains from one side of the South American Continent to the other-and it must not be forgotten that the Cordilleras are even higher than the Alps-on mule back, running all the risks of that old-fashioned mode of travel. Many a precipice's edge had to be passed on her sure-footed little beast, and once Providence seemed almost to have abandoned her. The animal disappeared with her over a precipice and she was saved, apparently only by a miraculous intervention. Nothing could diminish her zeal, nor quench her enthusiasm for her work. Dangers and trials might come, her one idea was to accomplish as much as possible before the end came, and the darkness set in and no man could labor.
Her South American missionary labors were successful, and she founded houses at Buenos Ayres, Mercedes and Rosario in Argentina, at Rio de Janeiro and San Paolo of Brazil. On her return to the United States there came the call for her Sisters to go to Central America. They tell the story of her sending to New York for one of her Sisters whom she had chosen to be the head of the foundations in Central America, to come to her in Los Angeles. The good Sister's train was delayed and Mother met her almost at the door telling her that she was sorry for the delay of her train, but now no time was to be lost. She must set out at once for Nicaragua.
There were very few words to be said, for it was deeds not words that she loved, and soon the definite foundation of a house in Central America had been made.
At the time of her death there were, as we have said, more houses of her Congregation than she counted years, though her work as a foundress had not begun until nearly half of her life was run. It is said that as a young woman she had in her zeal for missionary labor asked her confessor for permission to join an order of Missionary Sisters that would take her far from home, so that home ties should count for little in life, and should surely not disturb her complete devotion to her vocation. Her confessor replied that he knew of none. There were no missionary sisters in the strict sense of the word and so Mother Cabrini founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, which has flourished so marvelously.
Houses of the Congregation are established about Milan, and at Genoa, Turin, Cittá della Pieve, Monte Compatri, Marsciano; and hospitals and orphan asylums in Paris, London, Madrid, Bilbao, as well as other places in Europe and here in America. The greatest extension of the Congregation has taken place in the United States where, besides the Hospitals already mentioned, there are schools in New York City, the Villa of the Sacred Heart for children of better class parents at Fort Washington Avenue, an orphan asylum at West Park, schools in the parishes of the Transfiguration, of St. Charles in Brooklyn, of St. Rita and the School of Feminine Crafts in connection with the Church of the Madonna of Pompeii. In New Orleans there are two schools and a large orphan asylum; in Chicago, besides two hospitals, there is a school, and in Denver, a school and an orphan asylum, as well as a hospital and sanitarium. There are schools at Newark and West Arlington, N. J.; Scranton, Pa.; at Dobbs Ferry, N. Y., and a school at Seattle which was the opening wedge for a hospital founded later at this extreme end of the continent. Mother Cabrini took advantage of the sale of a large hotel in that city to secure it for this hospital.
Everywhere she emphasized the Italian origin and spirit of her work. No wonder then that the Ambassador from Italy deeply concerned with the problem of making the Italian people here as happy and contented as possible, but above all of keeping them from being imposed upon in any way, called her his "precious collaborator." "While I may be able to conserve the interests of the Italians,” he said, "by what I am able to accomplish through those who are in power, she succeeds in making herself loved and esteemed by the suffering, the poor, the children, and thus preserves these poor Italians in a foreign country.”
In spite of her devoted Italian sentiments, she drew her postulants from practically every nationality in the country. Many an Irish girl, after looking into Mother Cabrini's wonderful eyes, felt it her vocation to help this wonderful little woman in the work she had in hand. She won all hearts to herself, but only for the sake of the Master, and so it is that in the course of scarcely more than twenty-five years, her Congregation counts nearly five hundred members here in America. It has some three thousand throughout the world, all intent on accomplishing the social work that has been placed in their care, and of solving the problems brought about by the huge Italian immigration to the Americas in the eighties and nineties of the last century.
When the Italians entered the War, Mather Cabrini, by cable, mobilized her Sisters in Italy for the aid of their native country in every way possible. The houses of the Congregation were transformed into hospitals and refuges for the convalescent, as well as asylums for the sons and daughters of those who had fallen on the field of battle. Her devotion to her Italian people was so great, Il Carroccio, or as it is called in English, The Italian Review, published in New York, compares her to Florence Nightingale, for what she has accomplished both in peace and in war. Nor may anyone who knows all the circumstances of her work, deny that the comparison is more than justified. "Scarcely more than a generation has passed, and Mother Cabrini has thousands of coworkers and many hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries. What will the fruit of her labors mean three generations from now, if anything like the original initiative be maintained? Only the future can reveal the full significance of her story. One thing is certain, that after reading the brief sketches of her life that have thus far appeared, we may not doubt that God still provides the necessary agents for great works. When needs are most crying, some one is raised up who is equal to them. When conditions are at their worst, some one comes to find a way out of the difficulties. After the pioneer work is done, its difficulties are lost sight of by those who enjoy its results. But the pioneer succeeds only by the personal immolation of self and the ability to lead others by the same heights of sacrifice."
