ICONOGRAPHIE CHRÉTIENNE: Sainte FRANCESCA SAVIERO CABRINI, vierge religieuse missionnaire et fondatrice de l'Ordre des Soeurs Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur

Sainte Françoise-Xavière Cabrini

Missionnaire italienne aux USA (+1917)

Françoise-Xavière Cabrini était la treizième enfant d'une famille aisée de la banlieue milanaise. Elle rêvait, comme beaucoup à l'époque, de la Chine. Elle voulait y être missionnaire. Mais en attendant, il lui fallait gagner sa vie. Elle se fit institutrice, mais elle n'oubliait pas l'Extrême-Orient. Elle se présenta dans plusieurs congrégations religieuses féminines qui toutes lui répondent: "Postulante de santé trop fragile." Alors, elle passe outre et fonde une congrégation: "Les Sœurs missionnaires du Sacré-Cœur" (site en plusieurs langues). La Chine, pense-t-elle, se profile à l'horizon. Les voies de Dieu sont autres. Le Pape Léon XIII lui demande d'accompagner les émigrants italiens qui traversent l'Atlantique, misérables, déracinés, abandonnés, pauvres. Elle part avec eux. Pour eux, elle fonde des écoles et des hôpitaux. La Providence aplanit les difficultés. "La mère des émigrants" meurt d'épuisement à 67 ans.

Elle a été béatifiée le 13 novembre 1938 par Pie XI et canonisée (première sainte des États Unis) le 7 juillet 1946 à Rome par Pie XII qui l'a déclarée sainte patronne des émigrés.

À Chicago dans l’Illinois, aux États-Unis d’Amérique, en 1917, sainte Françoise-Xavière Cabrini, vierge, qui fonda l’Institut des Sœurs missionnaires du Sacré-Cœur et dépensa toutes ses forces avec une immense charité au soin des migrants.

Martyrologe romain

SOURCE : http://nominis.cef.fr/contenus/saint/297/Sainte-Francoise-Xaviere-Cabrini.html

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Sainte Françoise-Xavier Cabrini

(1850-1917)

Vierge et fondatrice :

« Missionnaires du Sacré-Cœur »

Née et baptisée le 15 juillet 1850 à Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, en Lombardie, treizième enfant d'une famille de cultivateurs, la petite Marie-Françoise, de santé si frêle, ne semblait guère vouée à traverser trente fois l'océan et à établir des fondations qui essaimeraient jusqu'en Australie et en Chine.

Françoise Cabrini embrassa la profession d'institutrice. Plusieurs tentatives pour se faire religieuse échouèrent à cause de sa santé précaire ; elle désirait aussi ardemment devenir missionnaire. Le curé de Codogno, qui connaissait sa force d'âme, la fit venir à l'âge de vingt-quatre ans dans la Maison de la Providence pour remettre de l'ordre dans ce couvent où quelques orphelines recevaient leur formation.

Un jour, l'évêque de Lodi dit à Françoise : « Je sais que vous voulez être missionnaire. Je ne connais pas d'institution qui réponde à votre désir. Fondez-en une ! » Sœur Cabrini réfléchit un instant et répondit fermement : « Je chercherai une maison. » Elle posa à Codogno les bases de l'Institut des Sœurs Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur. La prière était l'âme de leur action ; l'oraison remplissait quatre heures du jour, une cinquième s'ajoutait pour la fondatrice qui se levait une heure plus tôt que ses sœurs.

En sept ans, Mère Cabrini accomplit l'objectif désiré : l'établissement de sa congrégation à Rome et son approbation par le Pp Léon XIII (Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci, 1878-1903).

De Rome, son institut s'étendit rapidement. La Françoise-Xavier croyait que la Chine l'appelait, mais le pape lui demanda d'envoyer ses sœurs en Amérique pour aider les cinquante mille émigrés italiens qui attendaient un support matériel, spirituel et moral. Le Saint-Père lui dit : « Non pas l'est, mais l'ouest. Allez aux États-Unis où vous trouverez un large champ d'apostolat. » En effet, sans racines et sans foyer, les émigrés dépérissaient sur le plan religieux et social.

Francesca Saverio Cabrini arriva en Amérique le 31 mars 1889. Sa communauté prit bientôt un développement extraordinaire : hôpitaux, écoles, orphelinats surgirent à New-York, Brooklyn, Scranton, New Jersey, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Seattle et Californie.

Elle fonda une école supérieure féminine à Buenos-Aires. Cette vaillante ouvrière de l'Évangile se dépensa aussi en Amérique centrale et en Amérique du Sud. Au retour de ses voyages en Europe, Mère Cabrini ramenait des milliers de sœurs pour ses hôpitaux, ses écoles et ses orphelinats.

Francesca Saverio Cabrini a été béatifié, en 1938, par le Pp Pie XI (Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, 1922-1939) et canonisée le 7 juillet 1946 par le Vénérable Pie XII (Eugenio Pacelli, 1939-1958) qui l'a aussi constituée la Patronne céleste de tous les immigrants.

©Evangelizo.org

©Evangelizo.org 2001-2015

SOURCE : http://levangileauquotidien.org/main.php?language=FR&module=saintfeast&localdate=20141222&id=575&fd=0

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Sainte Catherine Tekawhita, Saint Pie X, Sainte Frances Cabrini - Stained glass on the south side of Joseph's Church, Roman Catholic parish church south of Aloha St. between 18th and 19th Avenues East, Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington. The church is a city landmark.

Sainte Françoise-Xavière Cabrini

Françoise-Xavière Cabrini était la treizième enfant d'une famille aisée de la banlieue milanaise. Elle rêvait, comme beaucoup à l'époque, de la Chine. Elle voulait y être missionnaire. Mais en attendant, il lui fallait gagner sa vie. Elle se fit institutrice, mais elle n'oubliait pas l'Extrême-Orient. Elle se présenta dans plusieurs congrégations religieuses féminines qui toutes lui répondent : "Postulante de santé trop fragile." Alors, elle passe outre et fonde une congrégation : "Les Soeurs missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur". La Chine pense-t-elle se profile à l'horizon. Les voies de Dieu sont autres. Le Pape Léon XIII lui demande d'accompagner les émigrants italiens qui traversent l'Atlantique, misérables, déracinés, abandonnés, pauvres. Elle part avec eux. Pour eux, elle fonde des écoles et des hôpitaux. La Providence aplanit les difficultés. "La mère des émigrants" meurt d'épuisement à 67 ans. Sainte-Françoise-Xavier Cabrini est la patronne des émigrants, des orphelins et des administrateurs d’orphelinats.

Autre biographie:

Née à Santangelo, près de Lodi, en Lombardie, treizième enfant d'une famille de cultivateurs, la petite Marie-Françoise, de santé si frêle, ne semblait guère vouée à traverser trente fois l'océan et à établir des fondations qui essaimeraient jusqu'en Australie et en Chine.

Françoise Cabrini embrassa la profession d'institutrice. Plusieurs tentatives pour se faire religieuse échouèrent à cause de sa santé précaire. Elle désirait aussi ardemment devenir missionnaire. Le curé de Codogno qui connaissait sa force d'âme, la fit venir à l'âge de vingt-quatre ans dans la Maison de la Providence pour remettre de l'ordre dans ce couvent où quelques orphelines recevaient leur formation. Un jour, l'évêque de Lodi dit à Françoise : «Je sais que vous voulez être missionnaire. Je ne connais pas d'institution qui réponde à votre désir. Fondez-en une!» Soeur Cabrini réfléchit un instant et répondit fermement : «Je chercherai une maison.» Elle posa à Codogno les bases de l'Institut des Soeurs Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur. La prière était l'âme de leur action; l'oraison remplissait quatre heures du jour, une cinquième s'ajoutait pour la fondatrice qui se levait une heure plus tôt que ses soeurs.

En sept ans, Mère Cabrini accomplit l'objectif désiré: l'établissement de sa congrégation à Rome et son approbation par le souverain pontife Léon XIII. De Rome, son institut s'étendit rapidement. La Sainte croyait que la Chine l'appelait, mais le pape lui demanda d'envoyer ses soeurs en Amérique pour aider les cinquante mille émigrés italiens qui attendaient un support matériel, spirituel et moral. Le Saint-Père lui dit : «Non pas l'est, mais l'ouest. Allez aux Etats-Unis où vous trouverez un large champ d'apostolat.» En effet, sans racines et sans foyer, les émigrés dépérissaient sur le plan religieux et social.

Sainte Françoise Cabrini arriva en Amérique le 31 mars 1889. Sa communauté prit bientôt un développement extraordinaire: hôpitaux, écoles, orphelinats surgirent à New-York, Brooklyn, Scranton, New Jersey, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Seattle et Californie. Elle fonda une école supérieure féminine à Buenos-Aires. Cette vaillante ouvrière de l'Évangile se dépensa aussi en Amérique centrale et en Amérique du Sud. Au retour de ses voyages en Europe, Mère Cabrini ramenait des milliers de soeurs pour ses hôpitaux, ses écoles et ses orphelinats.

« Travaillons, travaillons, disait-elle toujours à ses Filles, car nous avons une éternité pour nous reposer. Travaillons simplement et bien, et le Seigneur est Celui qui fera tout.» Elle établit soixante-sept maisons en huit pays. Humble devant la prospérité de son oeuvre, elle répondait aux témoignages d'admiration : «Est-ce nous qui faisons cela ou bien est-ce Notre-Seigneur ?» Son inébranlable confiance dans le Cœur de Jésus fut largement récompensée. Celle qui s'était souvent écrié : «Ou aimer ou mourir !» fit de sa mort un acte de pur amour de Dieu. Elle expira le 22 décembre 1917, à Chicago, dans l'état d'Illinois. Son corps fut transporté à New-York, dans la chapelle de l'école qui porte son nom. C'est là que ses restes sont encore vénérés. Le 7 juillet 1946, le pape Pie XII a canonisé cette dévouée servante du Christ dans Ses membres souffrants et abandonnés. Il l'a aussi constituée la patronne céleste de tous les immigrants.

SOURCE : http://jubilatedeo.centerblog.net/6573878-Les-saints-du-jour-mardi-22-Decembre?ii=1

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Statues of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (left) and St. Frances Cabrini in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah, Georgia.

Sainte Françoise-Xavier Cabrini

Fondatrice des Soeurs Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur

(1850-1917)

Né à Santangelo, près de Lodi, en Lombardie, treizième enfant d'une famille de cultivateurs, la petite Marie-Françoise, de santé si frêle, ne semblait guère vouée à traverser trente fois l'océan et à établir des fondations qui essaimeraient jusqu'en Australie et en Chine.

Françoise Cabrini embrassa la profession d'institutrice. Plusieurs tentatives pour se faire religieuse échouèrent à cause de sa santé précaire. Elle désirait aussi ardemment devenir missionnaire. Le curé de Codogno qui connaissait sa force d'âme, la fit venir à l'âge de vingt-quatre ans dans la Maison de la Providence pour remettre de l'ordre dans ce couvent où quelques orphelines recevaient leur formation. Un jour, l'évêque de Lodi dit à Françoise: «Je sais que vous voulez être missionnaire. Je ne connais pas d'institution qui réponde à votre désir. Fondez-en une!» Soeur Cabrini réfléchit un instant et répondit fermement: «Je chercherai une maison.» Elle posa à Codogno les bases de l'Institut des Soeurs Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur. La prière était l'âme de leur action; l'oraison remplissait quatre heures du jour, une cinquième s'ajoutait pour la fondatrice qui se levait une heure plus tôt que ses soeurs.

En sept ans, Mère Cabrini accomplit l'objectif désiré: l'établissement de sa congrégation à Rome et son approbation par le souverain pontife Léon XIII. De Rome, son institut s'étendit rapidement. La Sainte croyait que la Chine l'appelait, mais le pape lui demanda d'envoyer ses soeurs en Amérique pour aider les cinquante mille émigrés italiens qui attendaient un support matériel, spirituel et moral. Le Saint-Père lui dit: «Non pas l'est, mais l'ouest. Allez aux Etats-Unis où vous trouverez un large champ d'apostolat.» En effet, sans racines et sans foyer, les émigrés dépérissaient sur le plan religieux et social.

Celle qui s'était souvent écrié: «Ou aimer ou mourir!» fit de sa mort un acte de pur amour de Dieu. Elle expira le 22 décembre 1917, à Chicago, dans l'état d'Illinois. Son corps fut transporté à New-York, dans la chapelle de l'école qui porte son nom. C'est là que ses restes sont encore vénérés. Le 7 juillet 1946, le pape Pie XII a canonisé cette dévouée servante du Christ dans Ses membres souffrants et abandonnés. Il l'a aussi constituée la patronne céleste de tous les imigrants.

Résumé O.D.M.

SOURCE : http://magnificat.ca/cal/fr/saints/sainte_francoise-xavier_cabrini.html

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Statue group featuring the likenesses of Saints Frances Xavier Cabrini, Kateri Tekakwitha, and Andrew Dũng-Lạc in Saint Anthony Cathedral Basilica in Beaumont, Texas. They portray three ethnic groups in the Diocese of Beaumont.

Mère Cabrini, sainte et missionnaire contre toute attente

Aliénor Goudet - Publié le 20/12/20

Françoise-Xavière Cabrini (1850-1917), née en Lombardie, sait depuis son plus jeune âge qu’elle veut être missionnaire. Mais à cause de sa santé fragile et son apparence chétive, elle rencontre de nombreux obstacles à sa mission. C'est sans compter sur la détermination de la future sainte et des clins d'œil que lui accorde le Christ. Ceux-ci la mèneront bien plus loin que quiconque ne l'imagine.

Rome, 1878. Un silence pesant règne dans l’un des somptueux bureaux du Vatican. Depuis sa chaise, le cardinal Parocchi observe la petite religieuse qui se tient devant lui. Mère Françoise-Xavière Cabrini se tient droite, son regard à la fois doux et aussi perçant que celui d’un aigle. Mais malgré ce visage si sûr et plein d’anticipation, le cardinal ne semble pas convaincu. Non qu’il ait trouvé défaut à la présentation de mère Cabrini, ou que l’idée d’évangéliser la Chine et autres contrées de l’est ne lui déplaise, mais c’est une mission de grande taille, qui demande une force et un courage que peu de missionnaires possèdent.

Le cardinal Parocchi ne peut s’empêcher de remarquer l’effrayante maigreur de la religieuse. Malgré son impeccable posture, elle est si petite et son visage, si pâle. La pauvre s’effondrerait si elle portait plus que son voile. Comment confier à quelqu’un de si fragile une tâche aussi lourde ? Au risque de paraître cruel, mieux vaut ne pas lui donner de faux espoirs.

– Je pense qu’il vaut mieux remporter votre rêve avec vous à Codogno, dit-il sèchement, refermant le dossier sur sa table.

À sa grande surprise, le sourire de mère Cabrini s’élargit. Ah, si seulement il savait la raison derrière se sourire ! S’il savait combien d’obstacles la chétive religieuse a déjà traversés !

Depuis son enfance, mère Cabrini sait que Dieu l’appelle à la mission. Mais à cause de sa santé fragile et de son frêle gabarit, toutes les communautés lui avaient fermé leurs portes. Trop fragile, trop malade, trop faible, lui disait-on à chaque fois, et elle rentrait en larme se réfugier dans la prière. Mais comme chaque fois qu’un sentiment de défaite l’envahissait, le Christ la consolait et l’appelait de nouveau.

Même une fois ses vœux prononcés, elle avait dû faire face à son plus grand échec. L’évêque de Codogno, monseigneur Gelmini, séduit par la foi et la droiture de la jeune sœur Françoise-Xavière, l’avait nommée supérieure de la Maison de la Providence. Mais révoltées par cette décision, les deux autres sœurs plus âgées de la petite communauté avaient refusé d’obéir. Cette histoire avait fini par l’excommunication des deux insoumises et à la dissolution de la Maison.

Est-ce un ordre ou une suggestion, votre éminence ?

Encore à ce jour, c’est un souvenir amer pour mère Cabrini. Mais comme d’habitude, le Christ était venu lui murmurer des mots réconfortants à l’oreille et lui redonner courage. Depuis, elle avait établi l’ordre des sœurs missionnaires du Sacré-Cœur, ouvert de nombreuses écoles et orphelinats ainsi que quelques couvents en Lombardie. Et la voici face à un nouvel obstacle. La frustration est bien présente, mais elle ne laisse rien paraître. Le combat n’est jamais perdu avec le Seigneur à ses côtés.

Tout cela, le cardinal Parocchi l’ignore. Mais un frisson le parcourt lorsqu’enfin, la petite religieuse lui demande ceci.

– Est-ce un ordre ou une suggestion, votre éminence ?

Il n’y a rien de logique ou de quantifiable à cette impression presque menaçante. C’est comme si un géant invisible se tenait derrière mère Cabrini. Un géant qui jamais ne la laisserait tomber. Et le cardinal peut presque voir l’audace se dégager d’elle.

– Une suggestion, répond-il après un long silence.

L’audace de mère Cabrini la conduira bien plus loin que ne l’imagine le cardinal. Un mois plus tard, c’est le pape Léon XIII qui l’envoie elle et ses sœurs aux Etats-Unis afin d’assister et redonner espoir aux migrants des communautés italiennes. Aussitôt arrivée, l’archevêque de New York veut la renvoyer, l’estimant lui aussi trop fragile. Elle refuse.

L’œuvre des sœurs missionnaires devient rapidement indispensable pour les immigrants italiens. Elles se font infirmières, enseignantes et guides spirituels. Mère Cabrini ouvre de nouvelles écoles, des orphelinats, et même des hôpitaux, dont l’un est le fameux hôpital de Colomb. Son œuvre permet de raviver la foi auprès de ses patients et elle mendie même pour les plus pauvres.

Mais New York n’est qu’une ville. C’est le monde que veut conquérir mère Cabrini avec l’amour du Christ. Il y a tant à faire en si peu de temps…

Si mère Cabrini ne se rendra jamais en Chine avant de s’éteindre le 22 décembre 1917 à Chicago, son œuvre ne passera pas inaperçue. Elle sera canonisée par Pie XII le 13 novembre 1946. Sainte Françoise-Xavière Cabrini est la sainte patronne des immigrants, des hôpitaux et de l’administration.

SOURCE : https://fr.aleteia.org/2020/12/20/mere-cabrini-sainte-et-missionnaire-contre-toute-attente/?utm_campaign=Web_Notifications&utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=notifications

Cristiana dell’Anna va incarner sœur Cabrini au cinéma

Louise Alméras - Publié le 24/06/21

Le tournage d'un film sur la vie incroyable de sainte Françoise-Xavière Cabrini, surnommée la mère des émigrés, va débuter dans quelques jours. Alejandro Monteverde est à la réalisation tandis que Cristiana dell’Anna tient le premier rôle.

Après avoir fondé la congrégation des Sœurs missionnaires du Sacré-Cœur aux États-Unis, sœur Françoise-Xavière Cabrini (1850-1917) a fondé de nombreux hôpitaux, dispensaires, orphelinats, congrégations et écoles dans le pays. Sa vie est digne d’un roman sinon d’un film. Ce qui n’a pas échappé à Hollywood qui s’est lancé dans cette ambitieuse entreprise. Jugez plutôt. Le producteur du film n’est autre que Jonathan Sanger, qui a produit Vanilla Sky et Elephant Man, ce qui promet une direction expérimentée. Le choix du réalisateur s’est porté, quant à lui, sur le mexicain Alejandro Monteverde (Bella, Little Boy) dont le talent pour révéler la dimension humaine des personnages n’est plus à prouver. Enfin, pour incarner sainte Françoise-Xavière, la production a misé sur l’actrice italienne Cristiana dell’Anna qui s’est illustrée dans la série Gomorra.

Une femme forte, véritable modèle pour notre génération

Le tournage du film Cabrini doit débuter ce 28 juin aux États-Unis pour une durée de dix semaines, dont deux semaines à Rome. En comptant la postproduction, le film pourrait sortir à l’automne. Il pourrait donc sortir dans les salles françaises en 2022. Si les catholiques connaissent cette religieuse américaine ce n’est pas à sa célébrité que l’on doit ce film mais bien à sa hardiesse exemplaire. Tout commence en 2015 quand sœur Marie-Louise Sullivan, de l’Ordre des Sœurs missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur, demande à l’homme d’affaires Eustace Wolfington de participer à la réalisation d’un film sur la fondatrice de son Ordre. Il refuse catégoriquement avant de se laisser convaincre : « Sa persévérance a épuisé ma résistance », avoue-t-il. Il accepte donc mais à condition que le film soit axé, avant tout, sur l’idée d’une grande femme qui se trouve être religieuse afin que le film inspire et présente un modèle à imiter pour les générations actuelles et futures.

Bien vu. Car quand il prend connaissance de son parcours incroyable, Eustace Wolfington est admiratif : « En fait, Françoise-Xavière est l’une des plus grandes femmes de l’histoire américaine, sinon la plus grande ! C’est l’une des nôtres. » À elle seule, et grâce à toutes les congrégations qu’elle a créées, elle a réussi à surpasser les entreprises d’aides caritatives de son époque. Même des Rockfeller ! « Le monde est trop petit pour ce que j’ai l’intention de faire », s’amusait-elle à dire.

SOURCE : https://fr.aleteia.org/2021/06/24/cristiana-dellanna-va-incarner-soeur-cabrini-au-cinema/?utm_campaign=Web_Notifications&utm_medium=notifications&utm_source=onesignal

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Cabrini. Founder Statue by Enrico Tadolini, 1947Born - 15 July 1850. Died - 22 December 1917. Canonized - 7 July 1946 by Pope Pius XII
. Feast Day - 22 December. Founded - Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Text on Statue
Book - OMNIA POSSUM IN EO QVI ME CONFORTAT. Base - ENRICO TADOLINI FECIT / 1947. Pedestal - S. FRANCISCA XAVERIA CABRINI / S(ororum) MISSIONARIARUM A S(acratissimo) C(orde). J(esu) / FUNDATRIX - https://stpetersbasilica.info/Statues/Founders/FrancesCabrini/Frances%20Cabrini.htm

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Also known as

Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Memorial

22 December

13 November (in the United States)

Profile

One of thirteen children raised on a farm. She received a convent education, and training as a teacher. She tried to join the order at age 18, but poor health prevented her taking the veil. A priest asked her to teach at a girl‘s school, the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadagono, Italy, which she did for six years. She took religious vows in 1877, and acquitted herself so well at her work that when the orphanage closed in 1880, her bishop asked her to found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. Pope Leo XIII then sent her to the United States to carry on this mission.

She and six Sisters arrived in New York in 1889. They worked among immigrants, especially Italians. Mother Cabrini founded 67 institutions, including schools, hospitals, and orphanages in the United States, Europe and South America. Like many of the people she worked with, Mother became a United States citizen during her life, and after her death she was the first US citizen to be canonized.

Born

15 July 1850 at Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Lombardy, Italy

Died

22 December 1917 at Chicago, Illinois, USA of malaria

interred at 701 Fort Washington Avenue, New York, New York, USA

Venerated

21 November 1937 by Pope Pius XI (decree on heroic virtues)

Beatified

13 November 1938 by Pope Pius XI

her beatification miracle involved the restoration of sight to a child who had been blinded by excess silver nitrate in the eyes

Canonized

7 July 1946 by Pope Pius XII

her canonization miracle involved the healing of a terminally ill nun

Patronage

against malaria

emigrants (given on 8 September 1950 by Pope Pius XII)

hospital administrators

Storefront

Additional Information

Book of Saints, by Father Lawrence George Lovasik, S.V.D.

Saints of the Day, by Katherine Rabenstein

books

Book of Saints, by the Monks of Ramsgate

Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints

other sites in english

1001 Patron Saints and Their Feast Days, Australian Catholic Truth Society

Christian Iconography

Commonweal Magazine

Communio

Cradio

Domestic Church, by Catherine Fournier

Franciscan Media

Genealogia Italiana, by Deborah K Millemaci

Independent Catholic News

Medieval New York

New Evangelizers

New York Daily News: 1946 Article on Her Canonization

Novena Com

Patricia Treece: Mother Cabrini’s First Miracle

Saints Alive, by Father Robert McNamara

Saints for Sinners

Saints Stories for All Ages

uCatholic

Wikipedia

images

Saint Peter’s Basilica Info

Wikimedia Commons

video

YouTube Playlist

sites en français

Fête des prénoms

webseiten auf deutsch

Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon

sitios en español

Martirologio Romano, 2001 edición

fonti in italiano

Cathopedia

Santi e Beati

nettsteder i norsk

Den katolske kirke

Readings

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. – Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Inspired by the grace of god, we join the saints in honoring the holy virgin Frances Xavier Cabrini. She was a humble woman who became outstanding not because she was famous or rich or powerful, but because she lived a virtuous life. From the tender years of her youth, she kept her innocence as white as a lily and preserved it carefully with the thorns of penitence; as the years progressed, she was moved by a certain instinct and supernatural zeal to dedicate her whole life to the service and greater glory of God. She welcomed delinquent youths into safe homes, and taught them to live upright and holy lives. She consoled those who were in prison, and recalled to them the hope of eternal life. She encouraged prisoners to reform themselves, and to live honest lives. She comforted the sick and the infirm in the hospitals, and diligently cared for them. She extended a friendly and helping hand especially to immigrants, and offered them necessary shelter and relief, for having left their homeland behind, they were wandering about in a foreign land with no place to turn for help. Because of their condition, she saw that they were in danger of deserting the practice of Christian virtues and their Catholic faith. Undoubtedly she accomplished all this through the faith which was always so vibrant and alive in her heart; through the divine love which burned within her; and finally, through constant prayer by which she was so closely united with God from whom she humbly asked and obtained whatever her human weakness could not obtain. Although her constitution was very frail, her spirit was endowed with such singular strength that, knowing the will of God in her regard, she permitted nothing to impede her from accomplishing what seemed beyond her strength. – from a homily at the Canonization of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini by Pope Pius XII

MLA Citation

“Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini“. CatholicSaints.Info. 11 August 2020. Web. 18 December 2020. <https://catholicsaints.info/saint-frances-xavier-cabrini/>

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/saint-frances-xavier-cabrini/

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Shrine to Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, designed by brothers Theodore, James, and Gabriel Gillick, in Saint George's Cathedral, Southwark, London. The bronze sculpture depicts the saint watching over a group of migrants standing on a pile of suitcases.

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was born in Lombardi, Italy in 1850, one of thirteen children. At eighteen, she desired to become a Nun, but poor health stood in her way. She helped her parents until their death, and then worked on a farm with her brothers and sisters.

One day a priest asked her to teach in a girls’ school and she stayed for six years. At the request of her Bishop, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. Then at the urging of Pope Leo XIII she came to the United States with six nuns in 1889 to work among the Italian immigrants.

Filled with a deep trust in God and endowed with a wonderful administrative ability, this remarkable woman soon founded schools, hospitals, and orphanages in this strange land and saw them flourish in the aid of Italian immigrants and children. At the time of her death, at Chicago, Illinois on December 22, 1917, her institute numbered houses in England, France, Spain, the United States, and South America. In 1946, she became the first American citizen to be canonized when she was elevated to sainthood by Pope Pius XII. St. Frances is the patroness of immigrants.

SOURCE : http://www.ucatholic.com/saints/saint-frances-xavier-cabrini/

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Cabrini Shrine, Lincoln Park, Chicago

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Cabrini Shrine, Lincoln Park, Chicago

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Cabrini Shrine, Lincoln Park, Chicago

Book of Saints – Saint Frances Cabrini

Article

November 13

Frances Cabrini was born in Italy in 1850, one of thirteen children. When she was eighteen years old, poor health kept her from becoming a Sister. She helped her mother and father until their death, and then worked on a farm with her brother and sister.

A priest asked her to teach in a school for girls. She taught for six years. Because a bishop asked her, she started a missionary order in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to care for poor children in schools and hospitals.

Frances wrote to Pope Leo XIII, and he told her: “Go to the United States, my child. There is much work awaiting you there.”

She came to the United States with six Sisters in 1889, and began working among the Italian people of New York. She became an American citizen. Mother Cabrini started 67 orphanages, schools, and hospitals in 35 years. She was the first American citizen to become a Saint, 7 July 1946.

MLA Citation

Father Lawrence George Lovasik, S.V.D.. “Saint Frances Cabrini”. Book of Saints. CatholicSaints.Info. 6 January 2019. Web. 21 December 2024. <https://catholicsaints.info/book-of-saints-saint-frances-cabrini/>

SOURCE : https://catholicsaints.info/book-of-saints-saint-frances-cabrini/

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Mother Cabrini Shrine, Our Lady of Pompeii Church, Manhattan, NYC

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

Feastday: November 13

Patron: of immigrants, hospital administrators, Lincoln

Birth: 1850

Death: 1917

Beatified: November 13, 1938, by Pope Pius XI

Canonized: July 7, 1946, by Pope Pius XII

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was born as Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850 in Sant' Angelo Lodigiano, Lombardy, Italy. She was born two months premature and the youngest of thirteen children. Unfortunately, only three of her siblings survived past adolescence and Frances would live most of her life in a fragile and delicate state of health.

Frances became dedicated to living a life for religious work from a young age and received a convent education at a school ran by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart. She graduated with high honors and a teaching certificate.

When Frances was 18, she applied for admission to the religious congregation of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, but was turned down because of her poor health. Instead, a priest asked her to teach at the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadagono, Italy. She taught at the girls' school for six years and drew a community of women in to live the religious way of life.

In 1877, she became Mother Cabrini after she finally made her vows and took the religious habit, also adding Xavier to her name in honor of St. Francis Xavier.

When the House of Providence Orphanage closed, her bishop asked her, along with six other women from her orphanage in Cadagono, to found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for the poor children in both schools and hospitals. Frances composed the Rule and Constitution for the religious institute.

In its first five years, the institute established seven homes and a free school and nursery. Frances wanted to continue her mission in China, but Pope Leo XIII urged her to go to the United States, a nation that was becoming flooded with Italian immigrants who needed her help. "Not to the East, but the West," was his advice to her.

On March 31, 1889, Frances arrived in New York City along with six other sisters ready to begin her new journey. However, right from the beginning she encountered many disappointments and hardships. The house originally attended for her new orphanage was no longer available, but Frances did not gve up, even though the archbishop insisted she return to Italy.

After she refused, Archbishop Michael Corrigan found them housing with the convent of the Sisters of Charity. Frances then received permission to found an orphanage in what is now West Park, New York and now known as Saint Cabrini Home.

Filled with a deep trust in God and endowed with a wonderful administrative ability, Frances founded 67 institutions, including orphanages, schools, and hospitals, within 35 years dedicated to caring for the poor, uneducated, sick, abandoned, and especially for the Italian immigrants. Her institutions were spread out in places all over the United States, including New York, Colorado, and Illinois.

Frances was known for being as resourceful as she was prayerful. She was always able to find people to donate their money, time, and support for her institutions.

In 1909, Frances became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Eight years later, on December 22, 1917, Frances passed at the age of 67, due to complications from dysentery at the Columbus Hospital, one of her own hospitals, in Chicago, Illinois.

Frances' body was originally placed at the Saint Cabrini Home, but was exhumed in 1931 as part of her canonization process. Her head is preserved in Rome at the chapel of the congregation's international motherhouse. One of her arms is at the national shrine in Chicago, and the rest of her body rests at a shrine in New York.

Frances has two miracles attributed to her. She restored sight to a child who was believed to have been blinded by excess silver nitrate, and she healed a terminally ill member of her congregation.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was beatified on November 13, 1938, by Pope Pius XI and canonized by Pope Pius XII on July 7, 1946, making her the first United States citizen to be canonized. Her feast day is celebrated on November 13 and she is the patron saint of immigrants.

SOURCE : https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=278

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Frances Xavier Cabrini V (AC)

Born at Sant'Angelo Lodigiano (diocese of Lodi), Lombardy, Italy, on July 15, 1850; died in Chicago, Illinois, on December 22, 1917; beatified in 1938; canonized on July 7, 1946; feast day was December 22.

The life of Saint Frances is another remarkable story that teaches us the value of persistence in hope. I've seen a photograph of her--she was absolutely gorgeous with her dark hair, broad mouth, and shining, deep eyes. She was said to be small of stature and big of spirit. Naturalized in 1909, she is the first U.S. citizen to be canonized, but Francesca Maria was the Italian born 13th child of Augustine Cabrini, a farmer, and his Milanese wife Stella Oldini. On the day she was born, a flock of white doves flew down to the farm where her father was threshing grain.

Several times in her later life flocks of white birds appeared. Francesca loved them and compared them to angels or souls she would help save, or to new sisters coming to join her community.

Her parents baptized her Maria Francesca Saverio after the missionary saint Francis Xavier. Wittingly or not, it seems that her destiny was mapped out early. Because her mother's health was delicate, Francesca was taught mainly by her elder sister Rosa, a school teacher, and was encouraged by her uncle, Father Oldini, to become a foreign missionary. He knew her secret childhood game of filling paper boats with violets and setting them loose in the river as she pretended that the violets were missionaries going to convert people in far-off lands. Her parents wanted her to be a teacher, however, and sent her to a convent boarding school at Arluno.

As a child she learned to pray well by the example of her family. Her mother rose early to pray for an hour before going to Mass, and at the end of the day she prayed for another hour. Francesca would frequently steal away from her schoolmates to pray by herself in some quiet spot.

In 1863, at the age of 13, Francesca entered the convent of the Sacred Heart at Arluna, where she made a vow of virginity. When she graduated with honors at age 18, she was fully qualified as a teacher. At 20 she was orphaned, and felt called to be a nun. Like several saints before her, however, no one seemed to want her because her health was so poor that no one thought she would live very long, and rather discounted her as far as being of much use to her order.

By the time Francesca was 21, she had suffered much: in addition to the loss of her parents, 10 of her siblings died. From 1868 to 1872, she worked hard nursing the sick poor in her hometown, including a woman who died of cancer. She also had to deal with her own illness (smallpox) in 1871. These hardships combined to teach her that everyone in this world has a cross to carry.

After her recovery (1872) she began to teach in the public school of Vidardo. In 1874 after being turned down by the Sacred Heart nuns who taught her and another congregation, Don Serrati, the priest in whose school she was teaching, invited Francesca to help manage a small orphanage at Codogno in the diocese of Lodi. The House of Providence had been mismanaged by its foundress the eccentric Antonia Tondini.

Msgr. Serrati and the bishop of Todi, recognizing her intense love of God and bold holiness, and her deep love for the poor, invited her to turn the institution into a religious community. Reluctantly, she agreed. From Antonia, Francesca received only trouble and abuse, but she persisted. With seven recruits, she took her first vows in 1877. The bishop made her superioress.

Antonia's behavior became worse--she was thought to have become unbalanced--but Francesca persevered for another three years. Then the bishop himself gave up hope and closed the institution. That was according to Francesca's desires--more than anything else, she wanted to be a missionary to China. Thus, in 1880, the bishop counselled her to found a congregation of missionary sisters, since that was what she wanted to be and he didn't know of any such order. Francesca moved to an abandoned Franciscan friary at Codogno, and drew up a rule for the community. Its main object was to be the Christian education of girls in Catholic schismatic or pagan countries under the title of Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

Francesca and her sisters placed their complete trust in God. When there was no money to provide food, money miraculously appeared. When there was no milk for the orphans, a formerly empty container brimmed with milk. When a nun was again sent to an empty breadbox, the box was again full. God can never be outdone in his generosity. He promised that He would provide for our needs and He does for those who trust Him.

The same year the rule was approved, a daughter house was opened at Grumello. The sisters of the Sacred Heart soon spread to Milan. Francesca was a demanding mistress. She got up very early, an hour before the sisters who also got up early. Four hours daily were spent in prayer by each sister regardless of what else needed to be done.

In 1887, Francesca went to Rome to gain approbation of her congregation and permission to open a house in Rome. After an initially unsuccessful interview with the cardinal vicar--the congregation was deemed too young for approval--Francesca won him over. She asked to open two houses in Rome, a free school and a children's home, and the first decree of approval of the Missionary Sisters was issued in 1888.

Bishop Scalabrini of Piacenza, who had established the Society of Saint Charles to work among Italian immigrants in America, suggested that Francesca travel there to help these priests. Francesca longed to evangelize China, but realized that Italian immigrants in the U.S.--50,000 in New York alone--needed all the help that her order could give them. Archbishop Corrigan of New York sent her a formal invitation, so she decided to consult with the pope. In 1889, Pope Leo XIII gave his blessing to the enterprise. Despite her fear of water caused by a childhood accident, she set off across the Atlantic, landing in New York in 1889 (age 39) with six of her sisters.

Things did not get off to a good start, even with the archbishop's patronage and warm welcome. Apparently, the orphanage she was to have managed was abandoned because of a dispute with the benefactress. There was much to be done: A whole nation of orphans and elderly to be comforted--a daunting task with no money and no hope of any in sight. The archbishop suggested that she return home. Francesca replied that the pope had sent her to America and so she must stay. Within a few weeks Francesca had mended the rift, found a house for the sisters, and started the orphanage.

As with every difficulty she encountered throughout her life, with each new trial she would ask, "Who is doing this? We?--or Our Lord?" Even so, she encouraged her sisters to use efficiency and business acumen in the cause of charity, which won the respect of the most hard-headed and hard-hearted Americans.

Later that year she revisited Italy, as she would almost every year to bring back new missionaries. This trip she took with her the first two Italo-American recruits to the congregation. Nine months later she returned, bringing reinforcements to take over West Park, on the Hudson, from the Society of Jesus. The orphanage was transferred to this house, which became the motherhouse and novitiate of the order in the U.S.

In addition to the 24 times she crossed the Atlantic, Francesca travelled throughout the Americas for 28 years--from coast to coast in the U.S. by train and on muleback across the Andes. First she went to Managua, Nicaragua, where under sometimes dangerous circumstances she took over an orphanage and opened a boarding house. On her way back, she visited New Orleans, and there made another new foundation.

Francesca was slow in learning English, but she had great business acumen. She was sometimes overly strict and self-righteous-- rejecting illegitimate children from her fee-paying schools, for example--and she was slow to recognize that non-Catholics could truly mean well.

In 1892 one of Francesca's greatest undertakings--Columbus Hospital--was opened in New York. After another visit to Italy, she travelled to Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, and Brazil. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, she opened a school for girls.

In 1900 Francesca visited Pope Leo XIII again. He was then 90 years old. One day he said to her, "Let us work, Cabrini, let us work, and what a heaven will be ours!" Then after he had passed, he turned around and looked at her again. "Let us work, Cabrini!" he said, his kind old face all wreathed in smiles.

After her next trip to Italy, she travelled to France, opening her first European houses outside Italy. By 1907, when the order was finally approved, there were over 1,000 members in eight countries (including Britain, Spain, and Latin America), founded more than fifty houses, and numerous free schools, high schools, fifty hospitals (including four of the greats), and other institutions. At the time of her death, the congregation had grown to 67 houses with over 4,000 sisters.

This sickly woman's health finally began to fail in 1911, but she kept going even through the war. On December 21, 1917, fearing that the children in one of her schools might miss their usual treat of candy for Christmas, Francesca began to make up little parcels with her own hands. "Let's hurry," she said to her sisters, "the time is short, and I want to be sure that the children will have their treat." The time was indeed short for she died of malaria the very next day in the Chicago convent.

At first her relics were placed at West Park, Illinois. Her body now rests in the chapel of the Mother Cabrini High School in New York City, where you can see it in a state of marvellous preservation in its glass casket. The work begun for Italian immigrants was carried on for all without distinction (including convicts in Sing-Sing prison) (Attwater, Bentley, Benedictines, Delaney, Encyclopedia, Girzone, Melady, Schamoni, Stanbrook, White).

Because she was open to God, He used her to fulfill His purpose. We never know how God is going to use us; therefore, we have to wait expectantly, openly to see what He has planned. We can be sure that He won't disappoint us. God has a way of turning each attentive life into an adventure that brings joy and satisfaction and peace to His servant and those around him.

In 1946, Pope Pius XII named her patroness of all emigrants and immigrants.

SOURCE : http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/1113.shtml

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Chiesa di Santa Francesca Cabrini, a Roma, nel quartiere Nomentano.

St. FRANCES CABRINI

Influences in her early life

Frances Cabrini was born in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano in the province of Lombardy, northern Italy, two months prematurely, on July l5, 1850. Her father, Agostino, was a farmer and her mother, Stella, stayed at home with the children. Frances was the tenth of eleven brothers and sisters, only four of whom survived beyond adolescence. Small and weak as a child, these characteristics influenced her entire life.

Her Spirituality

Her parents’ strong faith was transmitted to her by word and example. Her father would read to the family from the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, telling stories of the great missionaries. The stories of the missions in China made a particularly strong impression on Frances and at an early age, she desired to travel there as a missionary.

At the time of her youth, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was at its peak and provided a spiritual foundation to the work of the missions.

When she was old enough she applied for, but was refused, admission to several religious orders because of her frail health.

In 1863, Frances registered as a boarding student at the Normal School in Arluno, some distance from Sant’ Angelo. Her purpose was to graduate as a school teacher. The school at Arluno was run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart who prepared and educated future teachers. Frances lived there for almost five years until 1868, the year she graduated. According to the custom of the time, boarding students lived in the convent with the religious sisters. For Frances, this was like a dream come true: for all practical purposes she was living as a religious among religious. Moreover, she shared the Christian life of a convent where the Sacred Heart was the center of devotion.

Upon completing her coursework, she petitioned to join the Daughters of the Sacred Heart. Although Mother Giovanna Francesca Grassi saw in Frances a chosen soul full of virtue, she decided not to accept her fearing that her poor health would not permit her to endure the rigors of religious life. Nonetheless, perhaps to soften the blow, or perhaps out of intuition, Mother Grassi encouraged her saying “You are called to establish another Institute that will bring new glory to the Heart of Jesus.” Her words were prophetic indeed.

In 1868, Frances received her teacher’s diploma and returned to Sant’Angelo where she taught in the private school established by her sister, Rosa, and dedicated herself to works of charity and to serving the poor. In 1871, at the request of her pastor, when a substitute teacher was needed immediately, she moved to the nearby village of Vidardo to teach in the public school.

A Crucial Move

In 1874, the diocesan authorities asked Frances to move to Codogno, a larger town further away from home to take over the direction of the House of Providence, a girls' orphanage, being unsuccessfully administered by Antonia Tondini and Maria Calza, in order to organize it with the structure and spirit of a religious institute. In complying with this request, Frances renounced forever the position of public school teacher and entered on a path of consecration to God. Five young women who were teaching at the House of Providence wanted to become religious sisters. She and the five women began their novitiate with Frances Cabrini as their novice mistress.

At the age of 27, in 1877, when she and her companions made their profession of religious vows, Frances added Xavier to her name, in tribute to the Jesuit, Francis Xavier, who evangelized the Orient. The bishop named her superior of the community. In 1880, due to many difficulties, the diocesan authorities recognized that the House of Providence could not be formed into a religious community.

Founding of the Institute

At this same time, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, as she was now known, received a mandate from the bishop to found a new religious institute with the help and support of the young women who had professed their vows with her. In a short time, she found an ancient Franciscan convent in Codogno. This is where the Institute of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was founded on November 14, 1880. It was established as a diocesan congregation in 1881, with a simple Rule written by Mother Cabrini, and approved by the bishop. There were some objections to the term missionaries, which implied a mission abroad. The bishop thought primarily of a service within the diocese, or at most, in the Province of Lombardy. However, Mother Cabrini, the 30 year old foundress, had no intention of restricting the congregation to the boundaries of Lombardy.

In Pursuit of the Goal

She set out for Rome in September, 1887. Her goals were to have a universal missionary Institute with a central house in Rome and pontifical approval of the young Institute. Since the ecclesiastical authorities moved at a slow pace and with caution, it was surprising that on March 12, 1888, the Institute was granted permission to open two missions in the Eternal City. While there, she met the bishop of Piacenza, Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, who had just founded the Missionary Institute of St. Charles to minister to Italians abroad.

The Italian Immigrants in U.S.A.

Italian immigrants faced many hardships in the United States. They worked at the most menial labor and experienced discrimination. Uprooted, without pastoral care, they were as strangers in their own church and the systematic targets of Protestant proselytism. Despite all, the great majority of Italians maintained an eagerness to return again to their Catholic faith and devotions. Seeking the help of religious women, Bishop Scalabrini asked Mother Cabrini to go to New York to work with the Italian immigrants. She hesitated because she planned to go to the Orient to evangelize.

Scalabrini was persistent and showed her a letter from Archbishop Corrigan of New York, formally inviting the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart to establish a house there.

Westward!

Mother Cabrini sought an audience with Pope Leo XIII and posed her missionary dilemma to him; his response was: “Not to the East, but to the West.” Exchanging her dreams of going to China for the reality of going to New York, she embarked with six of her Missionary Sisters almost immediately for New York. Upon arrival, she learned that Archbishop Corrigan did not expect her so soon. When they first met, he suggested that she return to Italy. She refused, saying that the Pope had sent her. She and her companions spent the first night in a dingy tenement in the heart of the Italian ghetto. They could not sleep and stayed awake, tired, yet peacefully engaged in prayer. Afterwards, the Sisters of Charity gave them hospitality and guided their first steps through the city.

Beginnings in America

In a new world, another culture, without contacts, not knowing the language, Mother Cabrini set out to establish her mission. She went back to Archbishop Corrigan and gained his support and friendship. He approved the house in which the Countess di Cesnola wanted the new missionaries to live. On Palm Sunday of 1890, an orphanage for Italian children was inaugurated on the property, part of which the missionaries occupied as a convent.

A free school was established in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the poorest Italians lived. The sisters taught catechism in the Italian parish of St. Joachim. All the while, Mother Cabrini with the sisters, constantly traversed the streets of the Italian district, visiting families, trying to help and guide them, and bringing God nearer to them. To support themselves and the orphanage, the sisters had to beg for alms because the help they received from other women’s religious congregations and donations from the wealthy were not enough to support the growing number of orphans. Young women soon offered their help and some asked to join the Institute.

In July, when everything was in order in New York, Mother Cabrini went back to Italy with the first North American postulants for the novitiate in Codogno. She returned to Rome for an audience with Pope Leo XIII, who was fast becoming her good friend.

Continuing the work

At the request of Archbishop Corrigan, Cabrini founded a larger orphanage in West Park, New York, on the banks of the Hudson River. It was an ideal, healthful site for the orphans and for the North American novitiate which opened in 1891. The land was formerly owned by the Jesuits, who sold it at a very low price, because it lacked sufficient water. However, to the surprise of the Jesuits, the ever resourceful Cabrini soon discovered an underground spring on the property to that provided ample water even to this day.

In 1892, at Mother Cabrini’s direction, her Missionary Sisters traveled to New Orleans and quickly established a school and an orphanage in “Little Palermo” an Italian enclave of the French Quarter.

Back in New York, the Italian immigrants needed hospitals. Care of the sick, until this time, was not one of the ministries of the Institute nor was it an inclination of Mother Cabrini to do this type of work.

Archbishop Corrigan begged Mother Cabrini to take on hospital work. However, it wasn’t until Cabrini had a dream where she saw the Blessed Virgin Mary tending to a hospital patient, that she considered working in the healthcare field. In the dream, Cabrini asked the Virgin Mary what she was doing; the Blessed Virgin Mary responded, “I am doing the work you refuse to do.” Mother Cabrini moved quickly to establish a hospital for the Italian sick poor in New York City.. New to this work, the sisters turned out to be excellent healthcare providers and administrators. Mother Cabrini later went on to establish other hospitals in Chicago and Seattle.

Beyond the American shores

The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had been in America only two years. They were hardly well established and yet, Mother Cabrini sought to extend their missions to Latin America. Her objective was Nicaragua and in ensuing years, Argentina, where she opened a school, Colegio Santa Rosa, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

She returned to Europe, and in 1898, she established a students’ residence in Paris and spent time exploring London with the prospect of founding a mission there. In 1899, she initiated a school in Madrid.

Expanding Horizons in the United States

At the turn of the 20th century, Mother Cabrini traveled to Chicago where there was a large Italian colony and established a parish school. From Chicago, she traveled to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where the Italian immigrants asked for schools. From Scranton, she proceeded to Newark, New Jersey, where she accepted the task of establishing and running a parish school there.

She looked for solutions which would afford her the means to subsidize free schools. In Dobbs Ferry, New York, on the Hudson River, she founded Sacred Heart Villa a school for daughters of now well-to-do Italian families who paid tuition, monies which in turn were utilized to fund the free schools.

Cabrini headed to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado where a needy colony of Italian immigrants worked mostly in the mines under very harsh conditions. Her Sisters staffed a parish school and later, an orphanage.

In 1903, Mother Cabrini traveled seven days by train from Chicago to Seattle where she founded a school and an orphanage for Italian immigrants. She dreamed of establishing missions in Alaska and had she lived longer, this may have come to pass. Her dream of going to China persisted throughout her life. Her works on the western coast of the United States brought her closer to the Far East.

She extended her educational and childcare missions to California where there were settlements of Italian as well as Mexican immigrants. By September 1905, a school and an orphanage had been opened. Later, a preventorium for tubercular children, would be started in the Santa Monica Mountains north of the city.

While in Seattle in 1909, Frances Cabrini fulfilled a long-desired plan and became a citizen of the United States of America. The ensuing years were times of constant movement: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana, Colorado, California, Washington State, Central and South America and Europe.

It was in the spring of 1917 that Mother Cabrini undertook her last mission. Her health was compromised. In spite of this, she traveled to Chicago where the now two hospitals there needed her presence. On December 22 of that year, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini died in her private room at Columbus Hospital as she was preparing Christmas candy for the local children. She was 67 years of age.

Her Legacy

For twenty-eight years of her missionary life, Mother Cabrini traveled regularly across the Atlantic Ocean. A prolific writer, it was during her second voyage, that she began the custom of writing letters to her sisters in the form of a travel diary. These letters are preserved today as valuable biographical documentation.

In conformity with the Heart of Jesus, the Institute she founded has responded compassionately and efficiently to the needs of all, immigrants, as well as the native-born worldwide. Education, pastoral ministry, and religious instruction and outreach to those in need spiritually and materially flourishes on six continents. Responses to the “signs of the times,” to needs as they presented themselves continue.

When Mother Cabrini died December 22, 1917, at the age of 67, 67 missions of the Institute had been established, ministries of healing, teaching, caring, giving and reaching out, in cities of the United States, Italy, France, England, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and Nicaragua.

Reference sources for further information about St. Cabrini :

Andes, Sr. Mary Lou, MSC and Dority, Sr. Victoria, MSC. 2005 St. Frances Cabrini - Cecchina's Dream, Pauline Books and Media

Di Donato, Pietro. 1960 Immigrant Saint. New York: McGraw-Hill

Galileo, Segundo. 1996 In Weakness, Strength, The Life and Missionary Activity of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Philippines: Claretian Communications

Green, Rose Basile, ed. and trans. 1984 Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. Chicago: Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Maynard, Theodore 1945 Too Small a World. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co.

Rose, Philip M. 1975 The Italians in America. New York: Arno Press (reprint).

Rosenberg, Charles E. 1987 The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System. New York: Basic Books

Tomasi, Silvano M. and Engel, Madeline H., eds. 1970 The Italian Experience in the United States. Staten Island, NY: Center for Migration Studies

Sullivan, Sr. Mary Louise, MSC, Ph.D. 1992 Mother Cabrini - Italian Immigrant of the Century, New York: Center for Migration Studies

SOURCE : http://www.mothercabrini.org/legacy/life1.asp

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Fassade der Basilika St. Antonius & Francesca Cabrini, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Provinz Lodi, Region Lombardei, Italien

Facade of the Basilica of Sts. Anthony & Francesca Cabrini, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Province of Lodi, Region of Lombardy, Italy

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Langhaus der Basilika St. Antonius & Francesca Cabrini, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Provinz Lodi, Region Lombardei, Italien

Nave of the Basilica of Sts. Anthony & Francesca Cabrini, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Province of Lodi, Region of Lombardy, Italy

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

This saint, the first United States citizen to be canonized, was born in Italy of parents who were farmers. She was the thirteenth child, born when her mother was fifty-two years old. The missionary spirit was awakened in her as a little girl when her father read stories of the missions to his children. She received a good education, and at eighteen was awarded the normal school certificate.

For a while she helped the pastor teach catechism and visited the sick and the poor. She also taught school in a nearby town, and for six years supervised an orphanage assisted by a group of young women. The bishop of Lodi heard of this group and asked Frances to establish a missionary institute to work in his diocese. Frances did so, calling the community the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. An academy for girls was opened and new houses quickly sprang up.

One day Bishop Scalabrini, founder of the Missionaries of Emigration, described to Mother Cabrini the wretched economical and spiritual conditions of the many Italian immigrants in the United States, and she was deeply moved. An audience with Pope Leo XIII changed her plans to go to the missions of the East. "Not to the East, but to the West," the Pope said to her. "Go to the United States." Mother Cabrini no longer hesitated. She landed in New York in 1889, established an orphanage, and then set out on a lifework that comprised the alleviation of every human need. For the children she erected schools, kindergartens, clinics, orphanages, and foundling homes, and numbers of hospitals for the needy sick. At her death over five thousand children were receiving care in her charitable institutions, and at the same time her community had grown to five hundred members in seventy houses in North and South America, France, Spain, and England.

The saint, frail and diminutive of stature, showed such energy and enterprise that everyone marveled. She crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times to visit the various houses and institutions. In 1909 she adopted the United States as her country and became a citizen. After thirty-seven years of unflagging labor and heroic charity she died alone in a chair in Columbus Hospital at Chicago, Illinois, while making dolls for orphans in preparation for a Christmas party. Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago officiated at her funeral and in 1938 also presided at her beatification by Pius XI. She was canonized by Pius XII in 1946. She lies buried under the altar of the chapel of Mother Cabrini High School in New York City.

—A Saint A Day, Berchmans Bittle, O.F.M.Cap.

Patronage: against malaria; emigrants (given on 8 September 1950 by Pope Pius XII); hospital administrators; immigrants; orphans

Symbols and Representation: ship; heart; book.

Highlights and Things to Do:

Read more about St. Frances Xavier Cabrini:

Mother Cabrini's body is located in New York at the St. Frances Cabrini Shrine.

If you live in or pass through Colorado, visit the western Mother Cabrini Shrine.

Find out more about the religious order Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart that she founded. See the current website.

Prepare an Italian dinner in honor of St. Francis Cabrini. For dessert make a ship cake (symbolizing her missionary work), a heart cake (she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart) or a Book Cake (symbolizing her founding a religious order). Catholic Cuisine has a few ideas for inspiration.

Say the Little Rosary of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini.

Cabrini Universityclosing in 2024.

Read the Encyclical, On Consecrated Virginity, by Pius XII and if you are single consider the possibility of a vocation to this life.

Read the Pope Benedict XVI's Address for World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2007.

Visit Christian Iconography for some images of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.

See her Founder statue in St. Peter's Basilica.

SOURCE : https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2021-11-13

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Blessed Mother Cabrini Church, Chicago

Patron Saint of Immigrants: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

By Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted

Nov 24, 2015

In this 2014 file photo, A woman prays before the body of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, which rests in a glass casket under the altar in the saint’s shrine chapel in the Washington Heights section of New York City. The chapel adjoins Mother Cabrini High School, an all-girls college preparatory school the saint founded in 1899. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

Tenth in a series

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he first American citizen to be canonized a saint was an immigrant to our country and her life was dedicated to the care of immigrants. Coming to America, however, wasn’t what Frances Cabrini had in mind when she journeyed from Milan to Rome in AD 1887 to meet with the Successor of Peter. She wanted be a missionary in China. From the time she received the Sacrament of Confirmation at the age of 8 she had dreamed of witnessing to Christ among the Chinese; and that desire had only grown as she discerned her call to Religious Life and took St. Francis Xavier as her patron. But Pope Leo XIII told her, “Go not to the East but to the West — to New York rather than China.” He urged her to follow the large throng of emigrants who were leaving Italy each week for America.

The Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted is the bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix. He was installed as the fourth bishop of Phoenix on Dec. 20, 2003, and is the spiritual leader of the diocese’s 1.1 million Catholics.

In the 1880s, the care of immigrants was a major concern of the Church, especially of Pope Leo XIII and of the bishops of America. Among the final decrees of the famous Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (which authorized the development of the well-known “Baltimore Catechism”) was an urgent call to provide religious instruction for immigrants in their native tongue. The bishops also commended the varied agencies and apostolates that provided for the social needs of the large waves of immigrants coming to our shores.

Pope Leo and the American bishops knew of the hardships faced by immigrants: the harsh conditions they had to contend with on their journey across the ocean and upon their arrival, their dire poverty and the ugly bigotry they frequently encountered, and the grave dangers to the practice of their faith. They also knew that, down through the centuries, God had repeatedly called His people to offer hospitality to strangers, and to be particularly attentive to their spiritual and material needs. Where there are migrants, there the Church must be: to welcome, to educate, to assist and to be a voice for the voiceless. This mission was dear to the heart of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini.

After her conversation with Pope Leo XIII, then, Mother Cabrini began to make plans for serving Italian immigrants in America. From her arrival in AD 1889 until her death in AD 1917, she and the members of the religious institute she founded, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, poured themselves out in loving service to the Italians who had recently arrived here. She founded orphanages, began Catholic schools, opened hospitals and other institutions in New York, then Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and many other cities in the USA, not to mention her foundations in Central and South America as well as in England, France and Spain. Wherever Italians migrated, she and her sisters soon followed, deeply committed to seeing that none of them fell away from their Catholic faith.

Despite her frail health, which had prompted two religious institutes to deny her admittance to their ranks, Frances Cabrini crossed the ocean 25 times and traveled constantly by train, wagon and other means of transport across the vast territories of America. Wherever she went, she founded institutions (67 in total) which soon became centers for meeting the social, educational, healthcare and religious needs of immigrants. She was truly a spiritual mother for them.

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American to be named a saint, is little known by U.S. Catholics, says Catholic studies scholar Francesco C. Cesareo. Born in Italy, she became a naturalized American citizen in 1909. She worked among Italian immigrants establishing schools, hospitals and orphanages. Her feast day is Nov. 13. (CNS file photo)

Mother Cabrini would wholeheartedly have agreed with what Pope Francis said to immigrants and refugees at Independence Mall in Philadelphia this past September: “Many of you have immigrated to this country at great personal cost, in the hope of building a new life. Do not be discouraged by whatever hardships you face. I ask you not to forget that, like those who came here before you, you bring many gifts to this nation. … I think in particular of the vibrant faith which so many of you possess, the deep sense of family life and all those other values which you have inherited. By contributing your gifts, you will not only find your place here, you will help to renew society from within. …”

What was it that motivated St. Frances Xavier Cabrini to spend her life serving immigrants? Certainly her love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus was a constant spiritual fire in her heart, and the exhortation of Pope Leo XIII bolstered her confidence that care of immigrants was God’s will for her. In addition, she was motivated by her keen awareness that hospitality to strangers holds a central place in the Sacred Scriptures and the whole Judeo-Christian tradition. To welcome the stranger is an act of charity and more; it is part and parcel of our identity in Christ. Jesus says (Mt 25:35-40), “I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me, in prison and you came to visit me. … I assure you, as often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me.”

Not only did Pope Leo XIII urge Mother Cabrini to serve immigrants in America, he also is the first Successor of Peter to issue an encyclical, Rerum Novarum, that addressed the right to migrate in order to sustain one’s family. Pope Francis issued a similar plea on behalf of immigrants in his recent message for the 101st World Day of Migrants and Refugees, published on Sept. 3, 2015. Perhaps with Mother Cabrini in mind, he wrote, “From the beginning, the Church has been a mother with a heart open to the whole world, and has been without borders. This mission has continued for 2,000 years. … Today this takes on a particular significance. In fact, in an age of such vast movements of migration, large numbers of people are leaving their homelands, with a suitcase full of fears and desires, to undertake a hopeful and dangerous trip in search of more humane living conditions. Often, however, such migration gives rise to suspicion and hostility, even in ecclesial communities, prior to any knowledge or the migrants’ lives or their stories of persecution and destitution. … we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length.”

The life and witness of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini challenges you and me to welcome the stranger in our day. The refugees and migrants arriving in Arizona today come with dire needs of assistance not unlike those that Mother Cabrini addressed. May we follow her example of hospitality for immigrants and refugees, out of love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted

The Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted is the bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix. He was installed as the fourth bishop of Phoenix on Dec. 20, 2003, and is the spiritual leader of the diocese's Catholics.

SOURCE : https://www.catholicsun.org/2015/11/24/patron-saint-of-immigrants-st-frances-xavier-cabrini/

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

ST. FRANCES CABRINI

22 DecemberApse Spire-G103

Patron Saint: Emigrants Symbol: Lily

Between 1901 and 1913, almost five million Italians immigrated to America, of which more than three million came from the south. A true social scourge and drain, as many politicians and sociologists defined it. However, alongside the plight that emigration caused, an Italian saint, celebrated on December 22nd, deserves to be remembered, as she looked upon this phenomenon with the understanding eyes of a woman, a Christian, thus earning the title of “Mother of the Emigrants”: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Born in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano on July 15th, 1850, and left an orphan, Frances wanted to retire to a convent but was not accepted owing to her poor health. So, she decided to accept the job of looking after an orphanage, entrusted to her by the parish priest of Codogno. Just after receiving her teaching diploma, the young lady did much more: she convinced some of her fellow school mates to join her in founding the original group of Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. The year was 1880. Inspired by the great St. Francis Xavier, she dreamt of sailing to China, but the Pope told her that her mission was elsewhere: in America, where thousands and thousands of Italian emigrants lived in terrible and inhuman conditions. She, too, during the first of her twenty-four journeys across the ocean, shared the hardships and uncertainties of her fellow countrymen. Then, with extraordinary courage, she faced New York City, caring for orphans and the sick, building houses, schools and a large hospital. She then went to Chicago, and later to California, where she could continue to spread her work throughout America, all the way to Argentina. To those who congratulated her for the obvious success of all her work, Mother Cabrini would reply with sincere humbleness: “Are these things perhaps not the work of the Lord?” Death took her while she was still in full activity, during one of her many journeys to Chicago on December 22nd, 1917. Her body was triumphantly brought to New York, in the church attached to “Mother Cabrini High School,” so she could be near her “children.” In her travel notebooks she wrote “Today love must not be hidden; it must be active, vibrant and true.” Pope Pius XII canonized her in 1946.

SOURCE : https://www.duomomilano.it/en/spire/st-frances-cabrini/

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. John Bosco, St John Neumann ; St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Two of the stained glass windows in the Co-Cathedral of St. Robert Bellarmine in Freehold, New Jersey.

13 November 2009

Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin

13 NOVEMBER 2009. Today, in the dioceses of the United States, the Church celebrates the memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (Francesca Cabrini), the founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and the first American citizen to be canonized.

Francesca, one of thirteen children, was born in Lombard, Italy on 15 July 1850. At birth, Francesca was so small and fragile that she was rushed immediately to the local church for baptism for fear that she would not survive. However, her life of service and virtue is not only a testament to her survival, but of her flourishing in love of service to Christ.

As a young child, Francesca was mostly tended to by her eldest sister Rosa. Rosa desired to be a teacher, who imagined little Francesca as her pupil. The family's patriarch, Agostino Cabrini, often read aloud to his children gathered in their kitchen. And, the stories were usually stories of missionaries serving in far away lands. It is no wonder then that little Francesca imagined herself in play as a missionary sailing to far away places. When she turned 18 Francesca applied to the convent in the hope that she would one day be sent to the Orient as a teacher. However, Francesca's application was denied because of her health.

Undetered in her vocation of service, Francesca at once set herself to living as a lay person. Francesca cared for her parents, but both of them died within a few years. Then, a small pox epidemic swept through her hometown, and Francesca devoted herself to serving and assisting the ill. She worked so frequently with the sick that she eventually contracted small pox herself. However, her sister Rosa nursed Francesca back to health and she suffered no long-term effects of the illness.

On her recovery, and with improved health, Francesca accepted a job as a substitute teacher and reapplied to the convent. However, the local priest, Father Serrati, counseled the convent to again deny her application. Father Serrati had watched the way she devoted herself to the service of others in the small pox outbreak and thought Francesca's zeal and piety would have other avenues.

Father Serrati asked Francesca to go to a nearby town and "put things right" at an orphanage that was badly disorganized. During her time at the orphanage, Francesca took the nun's habit and after three years took her vows. So impressed were her superiors with the work that Sister Cabrini was doing, that they made her the mother superior of the orphanage at the age of about 27. For three years afterward Sister Cabrini worked at the orphanage until it was dissolved. At the orphanage, Sister Cabrini built strong relationships with many of the girls, and when the orphanage closed it left homeless Sister Cabrini and seven young nuns that she had trained.

At this point, the Bishop of Lodi called on Sister Cabrini and asked her to found a missionary order of women to serve the diocese. Happily accepting, now Mother Cabrini acquired an abandoned Franciscan friary in Cadogno and set to establishing her new order. Mother Cabrini's sisters opened a day school, sold embroidery to earn money, took in orphans, and soon were fully involved in missionary work. At the same time Mother Cabrini composed a simple rule for her order, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. They wore a simple habit, even keeping their rosary in a pocket to better enable them to work, and adopted as their patrons Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Francis de Sales. Mother Cabrini's order then began to grow and new houses were soon started around the diocese.

In 1887 Mother Cabrini went to Rome to establish a house there and seek papal approval for her order. After a short while in Rome she made contacts at high levels in the Church and her order was accepted by Pope Leo XIII, who later spoke of Mother Cabrini with admiration and affection. In this period too, Italy was suffering from terrible economic woes and many Italians were immigrating to the Americas. However, upon arrival on our shores, the new immigrants were often mistreated and were without the ties to family and church they had in Italy--simply struggling to survive. In answer to this cry, Mother Cabrini came to the United States 1889.

When Mother Cabrini and her company of nuns arrived in New York, they immediately set to work. Having no convent, a local wealthy Italian family purchased a house for the sisters who used it to start an orphanage. Soon, the orphanage was overflowing with children and the nuns frequently resorted to begging to meet the needs of all the children.

Over the next many years, Mother Cabrini spent much time in the United States and Rome. Then she traveled to Nicaragua, opening schools there. From there, schools were opened by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Argentina, France, England, and Spain. Schools were next opened in Brasil as South American novices took to the order. Then, Mother Cabrini returned to the United States, starting new schools in New York and across the country as she traveled westward. In 1909 in Seattle, Washington, at the age of 59 Mother Cabrini took the oath of American citizenship. While Mother Cabrini might have, at this point in her life, been looking forward to a life of reduced activity, she continued to travel to and fro in the support of her order.

However well known that Mother Cabrini became, though, she always lived a modest and humble life. In fact, she deplored being referred to as the "head" of her order. Although the friend of three popes, Mother Cabrini did not take on the air of authority.

On the way back to New York from a trip to the Pacific Coast, Mother Cabrini stopped in Chicago. While there, though, she suffered a recurrence of malaria that she had contracted many years before. As she was recovering from her illness, Mother Cabrini was helping her nuns and some children prepare for a Christmas party in the hospital when she suffered a fatal heart attack. Mother Cabrini died on 22 December 1917, at the age of 67.

Mother Cabrini's body today lies beneath the altar at the Saint Frances Cabrini Shrine at Mother Cabrini High School in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. She was beatified on 18 November 1938, and canonized on 7 July 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants.

Prayer

God, You called Saint Frances Cabrini
from Italy to serve immigrants of America.
By her eaxmple
teach us concern for the stranger,
the sick, and the frustrated.
By her prayers help us to see Christ
in all men and women we encounter.

SOURCE : https://acta-sanctorum.blogspot.com/2009/11/frances-xavier-cabrini-virgin.html

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Cabrini Church, located at 1335 S. 10th Street in Omaha, Nebraska; seen from the southwest. The church is the former St. Philomena's Cathedral.

November 13, 2014

Paper Boats Filled With Violets: A Story of Mother Cabrini

Cari Donaldson

Somewhere in northern Italy, a frail little girl crouches by the side of a canal. She is dropping little boats made of paper in the swiftly flowing water, and nestled in each boat there is a violet. The girl imagines each violet is a missionary, and each boat is hurrying off towards India or China.

The little girl is Francis Cabrini, the youngest of eleven children, and one of only four who will survive past adolescence. She is small and fragile, and when she gets older, she is told that, despite her obvious faith and intelligence, she cannot take vows with the religious order she seeks to join. Cabrini floats on past this obstacle, taking a headmistress position at an orphanage, and gathering like-minded religious women around her.

Eventually, Cabrini is allowed to take religious vows, and her charitable efforts, her work ethic, and her resourcefulness, bring her to the attention of Pope Leo XIII. Hoping to seek approval to float on to China, to do what the violets of her youth did, and evangelize the people there, Cabrini asks the Pope for his permission.

Permission is given, but with a twist. Instead of sailing to China, Pope Leo XIII asks Cabrini to head to America, to minister to the swelling population of Italians who were flooding into the States, often in total poverty. And so the frail violet took a boat of wood, not of paper, to the West, and not the East.

Violets are a curious flower. The fragrance contains a chemical called ionone, which first stimulates our sense receptors with a sweet, ephemeral smell, then binds to them, causing them to shut off temporarily. You cannot register the smell of violets for more than a few moments at a time, before the ionone “blinds” you to it, only to pop up a while later, just as fragrant as before. This here-then-gone phenomena is the perfect metaphor for Cabrini, whose phenomenal good works popped up in New York, then Chicago, then Seattle, New Orleans, and Denver. She was in one spot, founding hospitals and schools, then gone, only to reappear in another city, working just as tirelessly.

Despite tremendous odds, Cabrini continued on. She founded institutions to serve the poor and ill, she rallied community support and showed a knack for finding people who would donate time, talent, and treasure to these undertakings. She cared for people’s physical and spiritual needs with an energy and perseverance that was astounding.

And then, like the scent of the violet, she was gone from this world, dying at the age of 67, while preparing Christmas candy for sick children. However, just like the molecules of violet fragrance that linger in our olfactory senses despite our ability to sense them, so was Mother Cabrini still working for us, this time through her intercession.

A short three years after her death, Mother Cabrini, once a frail girl dropping paper boats and violets into the water, dreaming of bringing the light of Christ to those in the darkness, brings light back to tiny Peter Smith’s eyes.

Peter Smith, whose newborn eyes had been accidentally given a far greater dosage of silver nitrate than tolerable, was completely healed, burned, charred tissue and all, after Mother Cabrini’s spiritual daughters prayed for her intercession.

The astounding miracle approved for Cabrini’s beatification was a fitting one for God’s good servant, whose vision resulted in hospitals, orphanages, religious orders, schools, and even, to the delight of the small girl she once was, missionary trips to China and Siberia. The little child with the boats full of violets spread God’s love to the West, East, and all points in between.

image: Andrew Balet / Wikimedia Commons

By Cari Donaldson

Cari Donaldson lives on a New England farm with her high school sweetheart, their six kids, and a menagerie of animals of varying usefulness. She is the author of Pope Awesome and Other Stories, and has a website for her farm, Ghost Fawn Homestead.

SOURCE : https://catholicexchange.com/paper-boats-filled-violets-story-mother-cabrini

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Saint Stephen, Martyr Roman Catholic Church, Chesapeake, Virginia

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini: Patron of hospitals, immigrants, and orphans

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, commonly known as "Mother Cabrini", was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. Born in Lombardy, Italy in 1850, (one of thirteen children), she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1880 and established many hospitals, schools, and orphanages.

In 1889, she set out for the United States and arrived in New York, where she and six other Sisters worked with the poor, especially with Italian immigrants. Over the next 28 years, she founded numerous schools, hospitals, and orphanages.

Mother Cabrini was not a strong person physically, but she had a great inner strength. She had an unbending belief and trust in God. Throughout her life and in all her many undertakings, she always knew that God would provide for her and the many schools, hospitals, orphanages, and missions which she founded.

In 1909 Mother Cabrini became an American citizen. She died in Chicago on December 22, 1917. Her remains are laid to rest in Mother Cabrini High School at 701 Fort Washington Avenue in the Bronx, New York. It is now a place of pilgrimage.

Mother Cabrini was beatified in 1938 and canonized a saint in 1946. She is the patron saint of hospitals, immigrants, and orphans.

During her lifetime, Mother Cabrini founded sixty-seven missions including schools, hospitals, orphanages and child-care centers throughout the United States and England, France, Spain, and South America.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Quotes

"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."

“Prayer is never useless; its’ spirit has power to penetrate everywhere….It’s end is always the glory of God, and the promotion of Christ’s interests, the extension of His reign, our personal holiness, and the sanctification of our neighbor.”

From a letter to the immigrants of Latin America and the Caribbean:

"In the adorable Heart of Jesus, I can always find you. He is our comfort, our way, our life. To Him I shall confide all your needs. I will speak to Him of each one of you in particular. I know the wants of every one of you. I will take a great interest in you and keep you close to my heart – you may be sure of this."

Prayer to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

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)
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini,
beloved spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
intercede for us
that the favor we now ask may be granted.

SOURCE : https://catholicfire.blogspot.com/2015/11/st-frances-xavier-cabrini-patron-of.html

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

St. Frances Cabrini in a Mosaic in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis

Mother Cabrini’s American Welcome

How to Love Immigrants & Refugees

Paul Moses

November 13, 2017

The November 13 feast day of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, comes with a special resonance this year. 2017 marks the centenary of her death on December 22, 1917, and Caritas Internationalis has launched a “Share the Journey” campaign that highlights Mother Cabrini as a model for how to love immigrants and refugees.

It fits with Pope Francis’s response to the nativism sweeping through the United States and other Western countries. “Journeys are made by two: those who come to our land, and us, we who go towards their heart, to understand them, to understand their culture, their language,” he said in initiating the campaign.

Mother Cabrini embodied both aspects of the journey. The first U.S. citizen to be canonized, she was an immigrant to the United States who devoted her life to welcoming immigrants. She remarkably established more than fifty institutions aimed mainly at serving Italian immigrants, including orphanages, schools, hospitals, and convents. What makes it all the more remarkable is that she did so while overcoming the considerable discrimination she faced as an Italian and as a woman: She was a double minority.

Mother Cabrini quickly learned what it was like to be considered a “guinea,” and soon discovered that church politics in America worked against the Italians. The Italian priests she had to work with were often incompetent. But, simply put, Mother Cabrini was more competent and more compassionate than the churchmen she had to deal with; she usually got her way.

Francesca Saveria Cabrini was born July 15, 1850 in a town south of Milan, the youngest of thirteen children, of whom just four survived. Having grown up in poverty, she was a determined young woman who at first was turned down by a religious order because she was considered sickly; she’d had smallpox. Once she entered the convent, she pursued a childhood dream of serving as a missionary in China. But Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini of Piacenza wanted her to go instead to New York, and pulled the strings needed to get Pope Leo XIII to order her, “Not to the East, but to the West.”

Scalabrini, who was beatified in 1997 and given the title “Father of the Migrants,” had noted that the mass of Italians who began arriving in America in the 1880s were receiving a chilly welcome from the church. He led a departure ceremony for the thirty-eight-year-old Mother Cabrini and six other sisters who traveled with her to New York, giving them a crucifix as a gift and then going with them to the train station in Milan (which would one day be named Stazione Cabrini). From Le Havre, France, the sisters traveled on La Gourgogne, a four-hundred ninety-five-foot-long, four-masted steamship with two smokestacks—and the sisters endured the fright of their lives when a violent storm struck on their third day at sea. When she saw the Statue of Liberty at the entrance to New York Harbor on March 31, 1889, Mother Cabrini asked the other sisters to sing a hymn to Mary, “Ave Maris Stella,” or “Hail, Star of the Sea.” One day, her achievements would land her name on a plaque on the statue’s base, the first on a list of famous immigrants.

* * *

Mother Cabrini’s mission to America grew out of Pope Leo XIII’s concern that the American church, then still under Vatican supervision as a missionary territory, was doing a poor job with the arriving Italian immigrants. The American bishops skirted the issue at their Third Plenary Council in Baltimore in 1884, even after the Vatican had urged them to take action.

Archbishop Michael Corrigan of New York, who Mother Cabrini was to meet after her arrival, was perhaps the most influential of the bishops who initially saw no need to give special attention to the newcomers. According to the minutes of a Roman meeting held December 1, 1883 to prepare for the Baltimore council, Archbishop Corrigan “observed that it was difficult to provide special churches for the Italians because: 1) the Italian immigrants did not ordinarily frequent the church; 2) they had their dwellings dispersed throughout the various parts of the cities; and 3) they made no offerings to priests either for the latter’s support or the maintenance of the church.” The bishops told a Vatican prefect that “it was impossible to provide at the moment a specific plan for meeting the spiritual needs of the Italian immigrants.”

Following the tepid response from the bishops at their 1884 council, Pope Leo commissioned a report the following year on what American churchmen called the “Italian problem.” Archbishop Corrigan sent him information gathered from the pastor of Transfiguration Church, which encompassed the lower Manhattan slums where the greatest number of Italians in New York resided. The pastor argued against creating separate parishes for Italians, saying they wouldn’t have the money to support one, and mentioned that the Italian Mass in his parish was held in the church basement.

Corrigan, surprisingly oblivious to Vatican sensibilities given his priestly training in Rome, sent a cover letter that explained further. It was translated in For the Love of Immigrants: Migration Writings and Letters of Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini, 1839-1905.

For four years now, they have had free use of the basement of Fr. Lynch’s church. Why only the basement? Forgive me, Excellency, if I tell you frankly that these poor devils are not very clean, so that the others do not want to have them in the upstairs church. Otherwise the others move out, and then good-bye the income. In time we hope to remedy these things. But it is necessary to move slowly.

In response, the Vatican issued a sharply critical 1887 report that said Italians were treated in a humiliating way in the U.S. church. It suggested that the religious indifference the immigrants were accused of was their reaction to an indifferent church. For the Love of Immigrants translated: “It is sufficient to point out that they are so despised for their filth and beggary that in New York the Irish granted them free use of the basement of the Church of the Transfiguration, so that they could gather for their religious practices, since the Irish did not want to have them in the upstairs church.” (Like Corrigan and the pastor of Transfiguration Church, most bishops and priests were Irish or of Irish ancestry.)

Pope Leo followed up on this report in 1888 with the encyclical “On Italian Immigrants,” which was addressed to the American bishops. The Italian pope, born Giacchino Pecci, took the opportunity to remind the bishops that his “love for men who spring from the same race as ourselves makes Us more zealous for their benefit, and We had the certain hope that your zeal and assistance would never be wanting to Us.”

The following year, Pope Leo dispatched Mother Cabrini to America, sending her not only through a frightening storm at sea but into a whirlpool of ecclesial politics.

Upon her arrival, Mother Cabrini learned that there was no house for her to live in; that a school her sisters were to teach in was not ready; and that Archbishop Corrigan was adamantly opposed to orphanage she planned to start.

Corrigan was annoyed that Countess Mary Reid di Cesnola, a Manhattan socialite whose Italian-born husband, Count Luigi Palma di Cesnola, was a general in the Civil War and later the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had pushed the orphanage plan with the Vatican. Corrigan argued there wasn’t enough money committed and opposed the location di Cesnola chose on upscale East 59th Street, far from Italian neighborhoods. Scalabrini’s priests had told him there could be government funding available for the project, but Corrigan knew that was not so.

A history written by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the order Mother Cabrini founded, describes what happened next:

And so it was that the sisters found out from the priests who greeted them at the dock that their promised house wasn’t actually ready. They were taken to a dirty, rundown hotel in the Five Points and put up in two filthy rooms. The beds were so uncomfortable and the neighborhood so frightening to the sisters that they passed the night without sleep.

The next morning, Mother Cabrini and the sisters met with Archbishop Corrigan at his residence near St. Patrick’s Cathedral. That was when Corrigan said there would be no orphanage—certainly not in the neighborhood Mary di Cesnola insisted on.

“I see no better solution of this question, Mother, than that you and your sisters return to Italy,” Corrigan announced.

Mother Cabrini paled, thinking about the storm she had experienced. She informed the archbishop that a higher authority—the Propaganda Fide, overseer of all the churches in America at that time—had sent her to New York. “No, not that, Your Excellency,” she said. “I am here by order of the Holy See, and here I must stay.”

At one point in the conversation, “the Archbishop grew red in the face,” according to testimony in the proceedings for Mother Cabrini’s canonization. It is described in Sister Mary Louise Sullivan’s 1992 biography Mother Cabrini: `Italian Immigrant of the Century, published by the Center for Migration Studies.

“Very well,” Corrigan replied to the formidable mother superior. “Stay here, but give up all thought of the orphanage and think only of the schools.” The archbishop then brought Mother Cabrini and her sisters to meet the Sisters of Charity, who welcomed them in their convent. Later, Archbishop Corrigan agreed to let Mother Cabrini open the orphanage on East 59th Street. The New York Sun noted as much on May 14, 1889, reporting that “the project has the approval of Archbishop Corrigan.”

The sisters recognized immediately that as Italians, they would be subject to prejudice. As Sullivan wrote, Mother Cabrini mailed home to get clean clothing because “otherwise they will call us `guinea-pigs’ the way they do to the Italians here.” The sisters saw that the prejudice reached into the church. One wrote that “We have to recognize more and more clearly that Italian sisters are not too highly regarded by the Irish and this will cause us difficulties.”

Despite the extraordinary poverty of the Italian immigrants, Archbishop Corrigan limited Mother Cabrini’s fundraising to the Italian community—knowing full well that his own priests complained to him all the time that they couldn’t raise money from the Italians. After seeking a donation from the superior of the Jesuits, Mother Cabrini wrote, “But, alas! He was more than Irish, that is to say for nothing was he disposed to help the Italians.” The sisters ended up going door-to-door, begging, and got some aid from the American Sisters of Charity.

Mother Cabrini eventually struck up a warm correspondence with Archbishop Corrigan. And the archbishop overcame his initial hesitation and founded many national parishes to welcome immigrants from Italy and elsewhere.. In one letter, Mother Cabrini assured him that he was appreciated in Rome (although there is evidence to the contrary; he never became a cardinal). And she bailed out both Archbishop Corrigan and Bishop Scalabrini by stepping in to administer the failing Cristoforo Colombo Hospital, which one of Bishop Scalabrini’s priests, a poor administrator, had run into financial trouble.

* * *

Mother Cabrini walked into a fairly early stage of the great Italian migration to the United States, and we are in a somewhat later period of a great Latino migration. That is, the church today has had more time by now to adjust to the Latino migration than Archbishop Corrigan did with the Italians arriving in the 1880s. They’re different historical periods, but the occasion of Mother Cabrini’s centennial should prompt reflection among American Catholics on how they view today’s immigrants, and how the church is responding to them. Much has been done, but certainly, a truly immigrant church would have made it a higher priority to oppose the anti-immigrant rhetoric heard during the 2016 presidential campaign.

As Pope Francis noted in a letter to the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in September, their founder was not afraid to take on difficult situations to help the marginalized. “One such example was when Mother Cabrini opened a house in the most infamous Italian quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, just one year after the cruel lynching of Italians accused of having murdered the city’s Chief of Police,” he wrote. He was referring to the 1891 lynching of 11 Italians following acquittals in a trial on charges of murdering Chief David Hennessy, a vigilante attack that mainstream opinion approved of.

Pope Francis held her out as a model for working with immigrants and refugees. Praising Mother Cabrini for her focus on poverty, he continued:

She combined that with a lucid cultural sensitivity by continuous dialogue with local authorities. She undertook to conserve and revive in the immigrants the Christian tradition they knew in their country of origin, a religiosity which was sometimes superficial and often imbued with authentic popular mysticism. At the same time, she offered ways to fully integrate with the culture of the new countries so that the Missionary Mothers accompanied the Italian immigrants in becoming fully Italian and fully American. The human and Christian vitality of the immigrants thus became a gift to the churches and to the peoples who welcomed them. The great migrations underway today need guidance filled with love and intelligence similar to what characterizes the Cabrinian charism. In this way the meeting of peoples will enrich all and generate union and dialog, not separation and hostility.

The saint’s motto, Francis said, was from Philippians 4:13—“I can do all things in Him Who strengthens me.”

Paul Moses is the author, most recently, of The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia (NYU Press, 2023). He is a contributing writer. Bluesky: @PaulBMoses.bsky.social

SOURCE : https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/mother-cabrinis-american-welcome

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Statua di Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini nel portico del santuario della Beata Vergine del Rosario di Pompei.

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini Vergine

22 dicembre

Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Lodi, 15 luglio 1850 – Chicago, Stati Uniti, 22 dicembre 1917

Una fragile quanto straordinaria maestrina di Sant'Angelo Lodigiano. In questo ritratto si colloca la figura di Francesca Saverio Cabrini. Nata nella cittadina lombarda nel 1850 e morta negli Stati Uniti in terra di missione, a Chicago. Orfana di padre e di madre, Francesca avrebbe voluto chiudersi in convento, ma non fu accettata a causa della sua malferma salute. Prese allora l'incarico di accudire a un orfanotrofio, affidatole dal parroco di Codogno. La giovane, da poco diplomata maestra, fece molto di più: invogliò alcune compagne a unirsi a lei, costituendo il primo nucleo delle Suore missionarie del Sacro Cuore, poste sotto la protezione di un intrepido missionario, san Francesco Saverio, di cui ella stessa, pronunciando i voti religiosi, assunse il nome. Portò il suo carisma missionario negli Stati Uniti, tra gli italiani che vi avevano cercato fortuna. Per questo divenne la patrona dei migranti. Nel giorno della morte il suo corpo venne traslato a New York alla «Mother Cabrini High School», vicino ai suoi «figli».

Patronato: Emigranti

Etimologia: Francesca = libera, dall'antico tedesco

Emblema: Giglio

Martirologio Romano: A Chicago in Illinois negli Stati Uniti d’America, santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini, vergine, che fondò l’Istituto delle Missionarie del Sacratissimo Cuore di Gesù e si adoperò in tutti i modi nell’assistere gli emigrati con insigne carità.

Tra il 1901 e il 1913 emigrarono in America ben quasi cinque milioni di italiani, di cui oltre tre milioni provenivano dal meridione. Un vero morbo sociale, un salasso, come lo hanno definito parecchi politici e sociologi. Accanto ai drammi che l'emigrazione ebbe a suscitare, merita ricordare una santa italiana, festeggiata il 22 dicembre, che a questo fenomeno guardò con gli occhi umanissimi di donna, di cristiana, meritando così il titolo di “madre degli emigranti”: Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini.

Nata a Sant’Angelo Lodigiano il 15 luglio 1850 e rimasta orfana di padre e di madre, Francesca desiderava chiudersi in convento, ma non fu accettata a causa della sua salute malferma. Accettò allora l'incarico di accudire un orfanotrofio, affidatole dal parroco di Codogno. Da poco diplomata maestra, la ragazza fece ben di più: convinse alcune compagne ad unirsi a lei, costituendo il primo nucleo delle Suore missionarie del Sacro Cuore; era il 1880.

Ispirandosi al grande San Francesco Saverio, sognava di salpare per la Cina, ma il Papa le indicò quale luogo di missione l’America, dove migliaia e migliaia di emigranti italiani vivevano in drammatiche e disumane condizioni. Anche lei nella prima delle sue ventiquattro traversate oceaniche condivise i disagi e le incertezze dei nostri compatrioti, poi con straordinario coraggio affrontò la metropoli di New York, badando agli orfani e agli ammalati, costruendo case, scuole e un grande ospedale. Passò poi a Chicago, quindi in California, onde allargare ancora la sua opera in tutta l'America, sino all'Argentina.

A chi si congratulava con lei per l’evidente successo di cotante opere, Madre Cabrini soleva rispondere in sincera umiltà: “Tutte queste cose non le ha fatte forse il Signore?”.

La morte la colse in piena attività durante l’ennesimo viaggio a Chicago il 22 dicembre 1917. Il suo corpo venne trionfalmente traslato a New York presso la chiesa annessa alla “Mother Cabrini High School”, perché fosse vicino ai suoi “figli”. Nei suoi quaderni di viaggio aveva scritto “Oggi è tempo che l'amore non sia nascosto, ma diventi operoso, vivo e vero”.

Papa Pio XII l’ha canonizzata nel 1946. Nelle diocesi di Milano e di Lodi la sua memoria si celebra il 13 novembre.

Autore: Fabio Arduino

“La vostra Cina saranno gli Stati Uniti”

Francesca nacque nel 1850 a Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, in una numerosa famiglia di contadini benestanti e cristianamente praticanti. Nella sua famiglia imparò non solo il fervore religioso e un certo spirito di iniziativa, ma anche un sincero amore alla patria italiana, non frequente in quei tempi. Questo giusto sentimento patriottico che cercò di risvegliare o di tenere desto nei numerosi emigranti italiani negli Stati Uniti.

onseguito il diploma magistrale e l’abilitazione, anche per accudire insieme alla sorella Rosa l’altra sorella handicappata Maddalena, accettò subito il lavoro di supplente nella scuola vicina di Vidardo. Qui insegnò due anni. Un episodio ci rivela il carattere e la determinazione di Francesca. Riuscì infatti a vincere la battaglia contro il sindaco anticlericale del paese: ottenne il permesso all’insegnamento della dottrina cristiana in classe nonostante la proibizione governativa. Lei però desiderava ardentemente diventare missionaria. Sogno che non poté realizzare subito. Fece anche i voti religiosi entrando nella Casa della Provvidenza di Codogno. Furono anni difficili, (“ho pianto molto” dirà lei stessa) che lei affrontò con coraggio e praticando la virtù dell’obbedienza.

Ma la Provvidenza le venne incontro nella persona del Vescovo di Lodi che le propose di fondare un istituto religioso per l’assistenza degli emigrati italiani in America. L’America non era la Cina che lei sognava, ma l’ideale missionario si poteva concretizzare ugualmente. Fondò presto Le Missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, con case in Lombardia, ed una anche a Roma. Il secondo intervento provvidenziale arrivò con Mons. Giovanni B. Scalabrini. Questi cercava un ramo femminile al suo Istituto, e stimava molto la Cabrini. Lei però temendo di perdere l’autonomia dell’istituto, resistette alla proposta. Ma accettò subito la direzione di una scuola e di un asilo a New York. Questo significava l’addio per sempre alla Cina. D’altra parte, ed ecco il terzo intervento provvidenziale, era stato nientemeno che il Papa Leone XIII a dirle paternamente: “Non a Oriente, Cabrini, ma all’Occidente. L’Istituto è ancora giovane. Ha bisogno di mezzi. Andate negli Stati Uniti, ne troverete. E con essi un grande campo di lavoro. La vostra Cina sono gli Stati Uniti, vi sono tanti italiani emigrati che hanno bisogno di assistenza”.

Francesca partì nel 1889. Destinazione l’America, città New York. Era sicura della volontà di Dio, e del campo di lavoro missionario. Ma le difficoltà non si fecero attendere. Uno dei primi che si mise a ‘remare contro’ di lei e il suo progetto fu addirittura l’arcivescovo Corrigan. Fece la parte dell’avvocato del diavolo scoraggiando quel manipolo di suore temerarie e... italiane che sembravano avere tanta fede ma, ahimè, poco “money”. Anche per le opere del Signore, pensava lui, ci vuole molto “denaro”. Che, poverette, non avevano. Non era più saggio tornare in Italia? La Cabrini gli oppose un argomento spirituale... la benedizione del Papa, e uno materiale: l’amicizia di una ricca cattolica americana, moglie di un emigrato italiano illustre, Luigi Palma de Cesnola, direttore del Metropolitan Museum.

Non si sa se il prelato fu convinto da questi due “argomenti”, ma è sicuro che la Cabrini continuò per la sua strada e il suo progetto. “Le suore aprirono una prima scuola femminile in un modesto appartamento offerto dalla contessa de Cesnola, ma si impegnarono anche in un lavoro di assistenza e di insegnamento nei quartieri più degradati della città, compiendo ogni giorno chilometri di strada ed entrando senza paura in ambienti spaventosi per miseria e violenza. Madre Cabrini dimostrò subito di saper affiancare alla sua attività di educatrice religiosa una spiccata sensibilità per i problemi degli emigranti italiani: “Gli italiani qui sono trattati come schiavi... bisognerebbe non sentire amor di patria per non sentirsi ferita” (L. Scaraffia).

Ella lavorò tutta la vita, con innumerevoli viaggi, per aiutare ad inserire gli emigrati nella realtà sociale americana, facendone dei buoni cittadini, ma nello stesso tempo rafforzando in loro anche l’identità italiana e cattolica. In questa promozione sociale Francesca usò una tecnica il cui principio era: convincere gli italiani ricchi ad aiutare gli altri italiani meno favoriti. Ed alcuni dei suoi benefattori, convinti e incalliti anticlericali, la aiutavano trascinati dal suo carisma più che dalle motivazioni teologiche.

“Si è detto che se Cristoforo Colombo ha scoperto l’America, la Cabrini ha scoperto tutti gli italiani in America. Ma pur sentendosi autentica patriota e quantunque circostanze particolari la inducessero a rendersi cittadina americana nel 1909, il suo ideale missionario rimase sempre quello genuino, senza confini di razze e di geografia” (G. Pelliccia).

Spiritualità e messaggio di Francesca Cabrini

Continuò con coraggio nel suo lavoro di fondazioni di nuovi istituti e di rafforzamento di quelli esistenti e soprattutto nel seguire l’Istituto delle Missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, da lei fondato. E questo fino alla fine della sua vita, che si spense a Chicago, durante uno di questi viaggi, nel 1917. Lasciando dietro di sé in eredità alla chiesa tutta e al mondo un fiorente istituto religioso e la sua personale santità e testimonianza di carità apostolica a beneficio particolarmente degli emigrati italiani (ma non solo).

Fu dichiarata santa da Pio XII il 7 luglio 1946 e nel 1950 proclamata “Celeste Patrona di tutti gli Emigranti”. Due anni dopo, in considerazione del suo lavoro per gli Italo-americani, il Comitato Americano per l’Emigrazione Italiana le decretava un importante riconoscimento dichiarandola “La Immigrata Italiana del Secolo”. Per gli emigrati italo-americani è semplicemente “la loro santa”: la sua opera geniale, coraggiosa la fece stimare anche in ambienti non benevoli verso il cattolicesimo, e aiutò enormemente a far cambiare idea sui nostri connazionali emigrati.

Francesca Cabrini non la ricordiamo per le sue opere teologiche o per grandi rivelazioni e miracoli. Niente di tutto questo. Noi la ricordiamo per la sua santità semplice, umile, fatta non di tante ore di preghiera, ma per tutte le ore delle giornate, di tutta la sua vita, passate a “lavorare, sudare, faticare per Dio, per la sua gloria, per farlo conoscere ed amare”. Una santità fatta non di rapimenti o di rivelazioni mistiche, ma di grande impegno sociale per Dio. Non fu rapita in estasi nella contemplazione di Dio, ma consumò la vita “lavorando” per lo stesso Dio. Con gioia. Un giorno, infatti, fermò una suora che era sul punto di imbarcarsi per andare nelle missioni, solo perché salutando parenti e amici, aveva affermato che faceva volentieri “il sacrificio”. Sembrava che per lei si trattasse di una rinuncia da fare, che le mancasse la gioia di partire e “lavorare per Dio”. Madre Cabrini la fermò dicendole: “Iddio non vuole importi sacrifici così gravi”.

Il Papa Pio XI esaltava il suo nome come un “poema di attività, un poema di intelligenza, un poema soprattutto di carità”. E prima ancora era stato lo stesso Leone XIII che già nel 1898, affermava di lei: “È una santa vera, ma così vicina a noi che diventa la testimone della santità possibile a tutti”. Una santità “accostevole” imitabile da tutti, perché consiste nel fare bene e per amore di Dio quelli che sono i nostri doveri. Questo richiama la famosa frase e programma di santità consigliato da Don Bosco a Domenico Savio, smanioso di farsi santo a forza di penitenze: bastava l’esatto adempimento dei propri doveri quotidiani.

La santità e “la spiritualità intensa di madre Cabrini si realizzò soprattutto nelle opere, nella sua continua attività finalizzata ad opporre del bene al male. La preghiera stava nei fatti, non nelle parole. La sua vita è segnata da una perpetua attività” (L. Scaraffia). Fatta tutta per Dio e per correre dietro al Cristo. Diceva: “Con la tua grazia, amatissimo Gesù, io correrò dietro a Te sino alla fine della corsa, e ciò per sempre, per sempre. Aiutami o Gesù, perché voglio fare ciò ardentemente, velocemente”.

Lavorare per Dio nella gioia (anche quando si pensa di avere diritto a tutt’altro). Non amava lamentarsi nelle difficoltà e raccomandava alle sue figlie non solo tanto lavoro ma anche il coraggio, fondato sulla fede, che si esprime nel sorriso: “Ci sentiamo male? Sorridiamo lo stesso”.

Nelle diocesi di Milano e di Lodi la sua memoria si celebra il 13 novembre.

Autore: Mario Scudu sdb

La patrona di tutti gli emigranti nasce a Sant’Angelo Lodigiano (Lodi), in Lombardia, nel 1850. Maria Francesca Cabrini è ultima di tredici figli. Il padre è un ricco agricoltore, ma ben presto Maria Francesca rimane orfana di entrambi i genitori (Agostino e Stella Oldini). La ragazzina, gracile di costituzione, dai grandi occhi azzurri e con un bel sorriso, si sente portata verso la vita religiosa e, dopo essere stata rifiutata da alcuni conventi perché di salute cagionevole, riesce a diventare suora e a diplomarsi maestra. Si occupa di un orfanotrofio a Codogno (Lodi) e, con altre suore, nel 1880 fonda l’Ordine delle Missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù per aiutare i poveri. Muta, poi, il suo cognome in Saverio in omaggio al santo missionario gesuita Francesco Saverio.

Madre Francesca si “vede” missionaria in Cina, ma papa Leone XIII indica a Francesca un’altra via e la manda in America del Nord per occuparsi degli emigranti italiani che vivono nella miseria, soffrono l’emarginazione e sono bisognosi di assistenza materiale e spirituale. Sbarcata a New York nel 1889 con sei suore, senza denaro e senza nemmeno conoscere l’inglese, la missionaria, tra mille difficoltà, grazie alla “Divina Provvidenza”, riesce a fondare un convento e un orfanotrofio e, in seguito, una scuola e un ospedale per bambini. Sempre sorridente, senza alcun timore si addentra nelle carceri, nelle miniere, nei quartieri più degradati e pericolosi per dare aiuto agli emigranti italiani e ai loro figli che, sbarcati in America in cerca di una vita migliore, spesso non trovano lavoro e vengono attirati dalla criminalità.

La suora lombarda, con la sua incessante attività, oppone il Bene al Male. In ventotto anni costruisce in tutti gli Stati Uniti orfanotrofi, ospedali, scuole, oratori, mense e ricoveri per i poveri. Introduce le sue suore (oggi presenti in tutto il mondo) anche in Sud America e in Europa (Francia, Spagna, Inghilterra, Italia) e fa ritorno in Italia per sei volte. Madre Cabrini, per sua scelta, diventa cittadina degli Stati Uniti a Seattle. La sua vita termina a Chicago nel 1917 e viene sepolta presso la “Mother Cabrini High School” di New York. Nel 1946 è la prima cittadina americana ad essere proclamata santa.

Autore: Mariella Lentini

Note: E' ricordata al 22 dicembre, mentre nelle diocesi di Milano e di Lodi la sua memoria si celebra il 13 novembre.

SOURCE : http://www.santiebeati.it/dettaglio/35800

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano. Il monumento a Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini posto davanti alla sua casa natale.

Francesca Saverio Cabrini

(1850-1917)

Beatificazione:

- 13 novembre 1938

- Papa Pio XI

Celebrazione

Canonizzazione:

- 07 luglio 1946

- Papa Pio XII

- Basilica Vaticana

Celebrazione

Ricorrenza:

- 22 dicembre

Un film su Madre Francesca

Discorso di Papa Pio XII sulla figura eroica di Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini (9 luglio 1946)

Discorso del Santo Padre Francesco alle Missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, in occasione del primo centenario della morte di Santa Francesca Cabrini (9 dicembre 2017)

A Francesca Saverio Cabrini (podcast Vatican News)

Vergine e religiosa italiana naturalizzata statunitense, a Chicago in Illinois negli Stati Uniti d’America, fondò l’Istituto delle Missionarie del Sacratissimo Cuore di Gesù e si adoperò in tutti i modi nell’assistere gli emigrati con insigne carità

“Oggi è tempo che l'amore non sia nascosto, ma diventi operoso, vivo e vero”

Maria Francesca Cabrini nacque a Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in Lombardia, il 15 luglio 1850 e rimasta orfana di padre e di madre, avrebbe voluto ritirarsi in convento, ma la sua richiesta non fu accettata per via della sua salute cagionevole.

Si dedicò allora a curare un orfanotrofio. Da poco diplomata maestra, con alcune compagne formò il primo nucleo delle Suore missionarie del Sacro Cuore, sotto la protezione del Santo missionario Francesco Saverio: quando più tardi pronunciò i voti religiosi, Francesca ne assunse il nome.

Aveva capito che la modernità sarebbe stata contrassegnata da enormi flussi migratori e da uomini, donne e bambini in fuga verso la pace e un futuro migliore. Questo uno dei caratteri di Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini che emerge dalle riflessioni di Papa Francesco.

In una Lettera alle missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, il Pontefice sottolinea come Santa Francesca abbia “accolto da Dio una vocazione missionaria” particolare: “formare e inviare per tutto il mondo donne consacrate, con un orizzonte missionario senza limiti, non semplicemente come ausiliarie di istituti religiosi o missionari maschili, ma con un proprio carisma di consacrazione femminile, pur in piena e totale disponibilità alla collaborazione sia con le Chiese locali che con le diverse congregazioni che si dedicavano all’annuncio del Vangelo ad gentes”.

Proprio il carisma missionario la portò negli Stati Uniti, ad assistere gli italiani che lì cercavano fortuna. Anch’ella, nella prima delle sue tante traversate oceaniche, condivise disagi, problemi e incertezze di chi lasciava tutto alla ricerca altrove di un domani migliore. Si occupò anche di orfani e ammalati.

Avviò opere in Italia, Francia, Spagna, Gran Bretagna, varie zone degli Stati Uniti, America Centrale, Argentina e Brasile. Proclamata Santa da Pio XII il 7 luglio 1946, grazie al suo impegno nel 1950 diventò la “Celeste Patrona di tutti gli Emigranti”.

Morì il 22 dicembre 1917 nell’ospedale per i migranti che aveva costruito a Chicago. Il corpo venne traslato a New York alla ‘Mother Cabrini High School’.

SOURCE : https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/francesca-saverio-cabrini.html

sulla beatificazione

In questi ultimi decenni si sono susseguite moltissime beatificazioni e canonizzazioni al punto che facciamo fatica a ricordarle. Ricordiamo infatti solo le figure più rilevanti e quello che ci colpisce di più è il fatto che molti di questi beati e santi noi li abbiamo conosciuti personalmente. Proviamo una grande gioia nel vedere che la Chiesa può veramente parlare bene di se stessa. E godono soprattutto quelle nazioni, parrocchie, congregazioni che sono direttamente interessate a quel beato o beata, a quel santo o santa. Ed è vero, questi beati e questi santi fanno onore alla Chiesa, specialmente in momenti difficili come questi.

Forse può meravigliare che ricordiamo una beatificazione di ottant’anni fa, quella di Francesca Saverio Cabrini, ma a quel tempo — siamo nel 1938 — i beati non erano così facilmente proclamati e i processi molto lunghi e faticosi. Nel caso di madre Cabrini, l’avvenimento fu avvertito straordinariamente anche da politici, scrittori, giornalisti, artisti, teologi che su di lei scrissero centinaia di testi.

Leggendo i documenti della beatificazione, si rimane veramente sorpresi per la partecipazione affettiva non solo del popolo — migliaia di lettere attestanti qualche grazia ricevuta arrivarono alla casa madre delle Missionarie del Sacro Cuore fondate da madre Cabrini — ma soprattutto di cardinali, vescovi, prelati e nunzi venuti da tutte le parti del mondo per venerare una nuova beata che durante la vita non aveva avuto, a causa loro, vita facile. Da viva, quasi la fuggivano. Raccontò una volta Giovanni XXIII che nella curia di Bergamo alcuni sacerdoti videro madre Cabrini in attesa di parlare con il vescovo e mormorarono che «ne aveva sempre una». Un prelato sudamericano che le aveva dato filo da torcere, invitato all’inaugurazione di un’opera delle missionarie, si meravigliò, forse per un senso di colpa. Ma con molto tatto femminile madre Cabrini aveva colto l’occasione per farlo riflettere sul male che le aveva fatto e senza mezzi termini l’aveva invitato a «convertirsi e a cambiare vita».

Sono innumerevoli le lunghe attese nelle curie vescovili che madre Cabrini faceva senza alcun esito, anzi con esito negativo. Eppure nelle tantissime lettere della Cabrini, pur non nascondendo la realtà, quando si parla di quei frangenti — a proposito di vescovi si dichiara spesso fiduciosa «che il Sacro Cuore gli avrebbe cambiato il cuore» — ripete sempre: «Quel santo Vescovo è stato molto buono, sembra un vero padre».

Dopo la morte, invece, quando la religiosa venne proclamata beata, dalle principali città degli Stati Uniti, dell’Europa, dell’America meridionale, cardinali e vescovi, nunzi e sacerdoti vollero essere presenti. Forse avevano compreso che madre Cabrini non aveva avuto mai dubbi che la strada indicatale da Dio aveva potuto percorrerla solo nella fedele, sincera obbedienza alla Chiesa. Chiesa che lei amava e rispettava pur vedendone i lati meno buoni. Non aveva infatti mosso un passo finché i tanti prelati con cui ebbe a che fare non diedero il loro consenso, anche se spesso venne costretta a presentare i suoi progetti con strategie diverse. Per lei questo significava la conferma di essere nella volontà di Dio. E questi ecclesiastici nei loro discorsi esaltavano l’umiltà della Cabrini nonostante ne avessero sperimentata la determinatezza.

Giuseppe De Luca, il prete intellettuale che fu tra i primi a scrivere su madre Cabrini, in occasione della beatificazione lo osservò: «Ebbe a Maestra la Chiesa, con quegli insegnamenti eterni e quelle particolarità temporali che furono del suo tempo. Accettò e mutuò espressioni e direttive, così come tra il 1880 e il 1910 la Chiesa le offriva, riconoscendovi il divino e non rifiutandone l’umano (...) Fece il suo viaggio terrestre sulla nave della Chiesa, accomodandosi senza disdegni sublimi né intelligenza critica al colore del suo tempo. Diceva: “Noi siamo nel seno della Chiesa cattolica, e sempre adagiamo il capo sulla pietra misteriosa e cara che è Gesù”».

Pur senza i mezzi di comunicazione di cui oggi disponiamo, la beatificazione di madre Cabrini suscitò interesse e amore da parte di molti che non sapevano chi fosse. A Honolulu i carcerati costruirono una chiesa in onore della beata Cabrini. In Cina le suore trovarono una chiesa a lei intitolata. In Germania una nobildonna, donando il suo castello a una congregazione di religiose che assistevano bambini con disabilità, volle intitolare l’opera a madre Cabrini. Dopo la beatificazione i giovani sacerdoti degli Stati Uniti andavano a celebrare la loro prima Messa in uno dei luoghi cabriniani, oggi santuari.

Fumetti e giornalini uscirono raccontando la storia della beata. Lorenzo Perosi compose una messa in onore della beata oltre a musicare una cantata scritta da don De Luca. Silvio D’Amico, il celebre critico e storico del teatro, tenne a Roma una memorabile conferenza nell’aula magna della Gregoriana alla presenza della principessa Maria di Savoia, di membri del corpo diplomatico e di altre personalità, e concluse così il suo lungo discorso: «Anche un dotto sacerdote lombardo, che fin dalla fine del secolo scorso aveva conosciuto da presso la Madre Cabrini per essere stato catechista nella sua casa a Milano, una volta vedendola da una finestra attraversare il cortile, chiamò la sua governante per additarle la consunta monaca dai grandi occhi dolci, e le disse: “Guardatela bene, quella è una santa”. Il sacerdote si chiamava, allora, Don Achille Ratti; è il Pontefice che l’ha beatificata».

L’arcivescovo di Chicago, cardinale George Mundelein, in un radiomessaggio trasmesso lo stesso giorno della beatificazione dall’emittente vaticana, diceva tra l’altro: «Ella è la prima del nostro popolo che riceve il più alto onore che la Chiesa assegna a uno dei suoi figli, annoverandolo tra i Beati del Cielo. Molti di noi sono immigranti o figli di immigranti ed è per noi opportuno e incoraggiante che una straniera, naturalizzata cittadina americana, sia la prima a essere innalzata all’onore degli altari, a divenire eroina nazionale e patrona universale nostra». E san Pio x, i beati cardinali Andrea Carlo Ferrari e Ildefonso Schuster, entrambi arcivescovi di Milano, Pio xii e molti altri furono grandi ammiratori e devoti di madre Cabrini.

Qualche mese dopo la beatificazione — era il 1939 — sul piroscafo Rex fu esposto e benedetto un quadro di Francesca Cabrini. In quell’occasione Giuseppe Capra tenne una conferenza per sottolineare il bene che la nuova beata aveva fatto da viva e che continuava a fare dopo la morte. Narrò tra l’altro un fatto singolare: «Un povero italiano tornava dalla visita alla moglie ammalata nell’ospedale Columbus della Cabrini e desolato, perché senza lavoro, aveva deciso di buttarsi nel fiume. Camminava triste col lugubre proposito quando si vede venire incontro una Suora che, conosciuta la causa di sua tristezza, lo accompagna ad un dato ufficio, dove gli viene offerto un buon lavoro. Mentre fuori di sé per l’incontro e per il lavoro trovato vuole ringraziare la buona Suora, questa è scomparsa. Ritorna lieto all’ospedale, trova la moglie migliorata e racconta la storia dell’incontro. La moglie gli mostra l’immagine della Beata, ed il nostro buon uomo esclama: Quella è la Suora che ho incontrata».

A New York dove era stata esposta la salma della nuova beata, sfilarono in un solo giorno ventisettemila persone mentre nella cattedrale di San Patrizio si celebrava il pontificale in suo onore. I pellegrinaggi accorsi a Roma quel 13 novembre 1938 erano quasi tutti guidati dai vescovi: così da Chicago, da Buenos Aires, da Rio de Janeiro, da Milano, da Lodi. E fu una provvidenziale coincidenza che due settimane prima della beatificazione di madre Cabrini, il 28 ottobre, a Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, dov’era nata, inaugurassero la nuova chiesa parrocchiale. Il vescovo Pietro Calchi Novati annunziò allora la beatificazione di Francesca dicendo «questo sarà il suo tempio». Otto anni più tardi, dopo la canonizzazione (7 luglio 1946), la basilica venne infatti intitolata, oltre che a sant’Antonio abate, alla nuova santa, nel 1950 dichiarata patrona degli emigranti.

Rileggendo le vicende della sua beatificazione, la testimonianza di madre Cabrini mostra che la sofferenza per il regno di Dio non è mai inutile, produce frutti di bene al mondo, ma soprattutto cambia i cuori e fa crescere la Chiesa nella verità e nella santità.

SOURCE : https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/francesca-saverio-cabrini.html

IN SOLLEMNI CANONIZATIONE

BEATAE FRANCISCAE XAVERIAE CABRINI, VIRGINIS,

IN BASILICA VATICANA PERACTA

HOMILIA SANCTISSIMI DOMINI NOSTRI PIO PP. XII

Die VII mensis Iulii, Anno Domini MDCCCCXXXXVI

Venerabiles Fratres, Dilecti Filii,

Quas glorias, quae incepta et opera sanctitudo christiana parit, eiusmodi profecto sunt, ut labentibus annis — dum humanae res aliae subsequuntur alias, omnesque pedetemptim debilitantur, fatiscunt, corruunt — non modo in suo gradu perseverent, sed interdum etiam mirabili quadam vitam actuose impellantur, ut quemadmodum « granum sinapis, quod . . . minus est omnibus seminibus . . . cum seminatum fuerit, ascendit et fit maius, omnibus oleribus» (Marc. 4, 31-32), cotidie magis augeantur, in omnemque invadant terrarum orbem. Quod quidem si nullo non tempore ex Providentissimi Dei consilio in Ecclesiae annalibus cernere gratum est, at hac nostra aetate videtur gratius, cum numquam fortasse magis sanctitatis fulgore ac fructibus indiguerint homines. Haec Nos summo cum animi solacio recogitamus, dum divina adspirante gratia datum est Beatam Virginem Franciscam Xaveriam Cabrini sanctorum caelitum honoribus decorare. Ea enim humilis virgo fuit, non nomine, non opibus, non potentia, sed virtute praestans. Inde a tenera aetatula candidum innocentiae lilium, paenitentiae spinis diligentissime septum, illibatum servavit; ac progredientibus annis superno quodam instinctu atque afflatu permota, se totiusque suae vitae cursum divino servitio divinaeque augendae gloriae mancipavit. Et quandoquidem singulari erat animi fortitudine praedita, etsi praegracili corpore, cum Dei erga se voluntatem novit, nihil reliqui fecit ut eam — quamvis res arduas et supra femineas vires postulare videretur — omni ope ad effectum deducere conaretur. Itaque suffragante gratia factum est, ut quod sacrarum virginum institutum humili initio condidit, illud brevi temporis spatio per Italiam, per Foederatas Americae Civitates perque multas alias terrarum orbis partes propagaretur.

Iuventam, e recto interdum aberrantem itinere, tutum in hospitium recepit, ac recte sancteque educavit; qui publico detinebantur carcere, eorum animos lenivit, superna spe auxit, et ad frugem bonam renovandamque probitatem erexit, excitavit; qui corpore infirmi, vel morbo infecti in valetudinariis versabantur, eos non modo consolata est, sed omni ope curavit, adiuvit; atque eis potissimus, qui, paterna relicta domo, exsules per alienas vagabantur terras, ac nimio saepius ab omnibus derelicti non modo inopem traducebant miseramque vitam, sed de christiana etiam virtute deque Catholica Religione infeliciter periclitabantur, amicam manum opportunumque perfugium, solacium, auxilium praebuit.

At undenam, Venerabiles Fratres ac dilecti filii, humilis haec virgo vim sumpsit, undenam invictam fortitudinem hausit, qua eidem licuit tot exantlare labores, ac tot rerum, itinerum, hominumque difficultates eluctari? Undenam habuit ut— licet innumeris distenta negotiis — serena semper ac fidens ad destinatam metam properaret, neque periculorum timore concitataeque vitae turbinibus quateretur umquam?

Ex fidei virtute procul dubio, quae vivida semper suo vigebat in animo; ex divina, qua aestuabat, caritate; ex indefatigabili denique precandi studio, quo arctissime Deo coniuncta, ab eodem, quidquid humana non poterat fragilitas, suppliciter rogabat impetrabatque semper. Dum fere innumeris distringebatur curis, rerumque vicissitudinibus distinebatur, in hoc uno — ex quo nulla prorsus re dimoveri poterat — eius mentis consilium eiusque voluntatis propositum defixum erat; in Deo nempe, quem unice diligebat, et pro cuius adaugenda gloria nihil ei laboriosum, nihil arduum, nihil supra humanas vires videbatur, superna gratia suffultas.

In omni autem agendi ratione, caelesti quadam serenitate supernaque luce ita eius vultus radiabatur, ut quae sacrae virgines eam sequebantur legiferam matrem atque magistram, ad sanctissima eius vitae exempla diligenter imitanda suavi animi impulsione allicerentur. Ita quidem ut Apostoli gentium hortamenta ac monita usurpare posset :« Imitatores mei estote, sicut et ego Christi » (1 Cor. 4, 16; 2, 1).

At non modo sacrae virgines, sed omnes profecto habent cur Franciscae Xaveriae Cabrini virtutes intueantur atque imitentur. Et quoniam hac nostra aetate nimis multi ad res externas inordinato quodam atque incomposito motu facile rapiuntur, discant ab eadem nominatim interna animi bona habenda esse potiora, omniaque esse ad Dei gloriam ad sempiternamque convertenda omni ope salutem.

Discant praeterea ab ea — quae non modo almam suam terram flagrantissimo amore prosecuta est, sed alienis etiam regionibus suae caritatis suaeque navitatis fructus indefessa impertiit — nationes omnes omnesque gentes unam dumtaxat efficere familiam; quae quidem non obscura ac turbida simultate, non aeternis ob acceptas iniurias inimicitiis disiungenda ac dissolvenda est, sed fraterno illo amore copulanda, qui ex Iesu Christi praeceptis divinoque exemplo suo oriatur oportet. Id impetret a « pacis Principe » (cfr. Is. 9, 6) nostroque omnium Patre novensilis haec sancta virgo, ita quidem ut restincto tandem odio, pacatis animis, ac privatis publicisque rebus non effrenato propriae cuiusque utilitatis studio disiectis, sed iustitia aequitateque compositis, pax veri nominis, ex qua communis proficiscatur cotidie auctior prosperitas, humanae consortioni arrideat. Amen.

SOURCE : https://www.causesanti.va/it/santi-e-beati/francesca-saverio-cabrini.html

Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Mother Cabrini is presented to pope Leo XIII from bishop Scalabrini to receive the mission in the United States. Work by Luigi Arzuffi, church of Caselle Landi, Italy.

Den hellige Fransiska Xaviera Cabrini (1850-1917)

Minnedag:

22. desember

Den hellige Fransiska Maria Cabrini (it: Francesca Maria) ble født den 15. juli 1850 i landsbyen Sant'Angelo Lodigiano mellom Pavia og Lodi sørvest for Milano i regionen Lombardia i Nord-Italia. Hun var født for tidlig og var den tiende av elleve barn av Augustin Cabrini og Stella Oldini fra Milano. Syv av døde ung og en var hjerneskadet, så Fransiska vokte opp med kjennskap til lidelse. Hun kom fra en velstående bondefamilie og ble strengt oppdratt, mye under innflytelse av sin eldre søster Rosa, som var utdannet lærer og «ikke hadde unngått alle farene ved det yrket», som biografen skriver. Fransiska ble kalt Cecchina i hjemmet.

Familien leste høyt fra Annalene til Propaganda Fide (Kongregasjonen for Troens utbredelse), som inspirerte Fransiska til en tidlig beslutning om å bli misjonær. Men foreldrene bestemte at hun i likhet med Rosa skulle ta lærerutdannelse, og da hun ble gammel nok, ble hun sendt til en klosterinternatskole i Arluno som ble drevet av «Døtrene av Jesu hellige Hjerte». I 1870 døde begge foreldrene. Etter fullført lærerutdannelse forsøkte Fransiska to år senere å bli nonne ved den klosterskolen hun selv hadde gått på i Arluno, men hun ble avvist av helsemessige grunner. Hun søkte da om å bli opptatt hos Canossa-søstrene i Crema, men hun ble på nytt avvist av samme årsak. Hun var under1,50 høy og hadde en skrøpelig helse.

I en alder av 22 år ble hun lærer på skolen i Vidardo nær Sant'Angelo. Hun fikk tillatelse fra borgermesteren til å undervise i kristen doktrine, noe som var forbudt av den verdslige skoleinspektøren. Da hun underviste der, merket presten Don Serrati seg henne. Han ble i 1874 utnevnt til prost i kollegiatskirken (en kirke som har kapittel uten å være domkirke) i Codogno nær Piacenza, og i sitt nye sogn fant han et lite barnehjem, Forsynets Hus, som ble vanstyrt av grunnleggersken, den eksentriske Antonia Tondini, og to andre kvinner. Biskopen av Lodi og Msgr Serrati ba Fransiska hjelpe til i denne institusjonen og forsøke å gjøre den og staben om til en religiøs kommunitet. Motvillig gikk hun med på det.

Allerede som ung jente hadde Fransiska tatt seg av vanskjøttede barn og hjulpet til i hospitalene. Etter å ha avlagt et privat kyskhetsløfte begynte hun arbeidet i barnehjemmet i en alder av 24 år. Fylt av dyp fromhet og uselviskhet viet Fransiska seg i de følgende år til arbeidet, selv om grunnleggersken av barnehjemmet, som hadde gått med på at Fransiska skulle komme, reagerte voldsomt på enhver innblanding og motarbeidet henne hele tiden. Hun gjorde tilværelsen nesten umulig for Fransiska, hennes medarbeidere og elevene. Men Fransiska holdt ut, rekrutterte flere hjelpere og sammen med syv av dem avla hun i 1877 sine første løfter. Samtidig gjorde biskopen henne til leder for barnehjemmet som superior. Men dette gjorde bare situasjonen verre. Søster Tondinis oppførsel var slik at det ble en åpen skandale – det synes som om hun må ha vært temmelig gal.

Til slutt stengte biskopen av Todi barnehjemmet i 1880 og ekskommuniserte Antonia Tondini. Fransiska søkte da om tillatelse til å grunnlegge et hus viet til utenlandsmisjon, kanskje for arbeid i Kina og andre deler av Det fjerne Østen. Det var en viss motstand mot dette forslaget, fordi katolske misjonærer alltid hadde vært menn, men til slutt oppfordret biskopen av Todi Fransiska til å grunnlegge en kongregasjon for misjonssøstre.

I 1880 grunnla Fransiska kongregasjonen «Misjonssøstrene av Jesu hellige Hjerte» (Missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù – MSC) sammen med de syv medarbeiderne fra barnehjemmet i Codogno, og hun ble kongregasjonens første leder. Den fikk plass i et forlatt fransiskanerkloster i Codogno. Til ære for den store misjonæren Frans Xavier tok hun navnet Fransiska Xaviera (it: Francesca Saveria). Hun skrev konstitusjoner for kongregasjonen, som hovedsakelig skulle arbeide med undervisning av jenter. Det skulle ikke være noen spesiell askese, for hun mente at søstrenes arbeid ville bli hardt nok.

Allerede i 1880 ble konstitusjonene godkjent av biskopen av Lodi. Fransiskas ry for hardt arbeid og spiritualitet vokste, så hun kunne grunnlegge hus i Grunello i 1882 og i Milano ikke lenge etter. Høsten 1887 dro Fransiska til Roma for å få kongregasjonen godkjent av pave Leo XIII (1878-1903) og tillatelse til å åpne et hus i Roma. Først ble det gjort store anstrengelser fra å få henne fra foretaket – syv års prøvetid var alt for lite. Det første møtet med byens kardinalvikar Parocchi bekreftet hennes rådgiveres forsiktighet. Men kardinalen ble vunnet for prosjektet og Fransiska ble bedt om å åpne to hus i Roma, en friskole og et barnehjem. Dekretet som godkjente kongregasjonen, kom i løpet av få måneder.

Moder Fransiska hadde alltid ønsket å arbeide i Kina, men mange geistlige oppfordret henne til heller å arbeide for de italienske innvandrerne i USA. Italia gjennomgikk en dyp økonomisk depresjon på 1870- og 1880-tallet, og desperate familier på sultegrensen dro til USA på jakt etter arbeid. Bølge etter bølge av innvandrere dro over havet, og «Little Italies» vokste frem i mange amerikanske byer, spesielt i New York og i Boston. Utbyttet av fabrikkeierne levde innvandrerne i fattigdom, ofte ukjent med språket og skikkene i et fremmed land. Mange av dem, spesielt fra landdistriktene i sør, visste lite om sin tro.

På denne tiden var USA klassifisert som et misjonsområde. Mens Moder Cabrini var i Roma, møtte hun den salige biskop Johannes Baptist Scalabrini av Piacenza, en av lederne for det italienske hierarkiet og grunnlegger av St. Karl-selskapet for å tjene italienere i USA. Han var blitt dypt grepet av å se flokker av emigranter som ventet på å reise fra jernbanestasjonen i Milano. Han sympatiserte med deres lengsel etter et bedre liv og klar over den bitre kampen for tilværelsen mange av dem ville stå overfor. Erkebiskop Michael Corrigan av New York hadde bedt om «gode italienske prester» for New York City. Biskop Scalabrini mente at det var riktig at Moder Cabrinis søstre reiste sammen med prestene.

Fransiska var betenkt, selv om erkebiskop Corrigan av New York sendte en personlig invitasjon. Hun bestemte seg for å konsultere pave Leo XIII selv, og i november 1887 fikk hun audiens. Etter å ha lyttet på henne i stillhet, sa han: «Ikke dra østover, men vestover!» og pekte dermed ut hennes vei.

Som barn hadde Fransiska falt i en elv, og etter det hadde hun konstant vannskrekk. Men hun bet tennene sammen og lukket øynene, og sammen med seks medsøstre satte hun ut på den første av mange sjøreiser over Atlanteren. Den 23. mars 1889 forlot de Le Havre og den 31. mars gikk de i land i New York. Det ble anslått at det i New York på denne tiden var 50.000 italienere, men bare 1200 kirkegjengere. Italienerne hadde som regel havnet i den tidlige kapitalismens umenneskelige fabrikker, og de som ikke fikk arbeid, måtte sulte i de skitne slumkvarterene. Mange av de italienske amerikanerne var i en elendig forfatning, og svært upopulære. Mange av dem havnet også på skråplanet, og New York og Chicago ble herjet av forbryterligaer.

Søstrene hadde blitt invitert til å organisere et barnehjem for italienske barn og ta ansvar for en folkeskole. Men selv om de ble varmt mottatt, var det ikke gjort noen forberedelser for dem. De måtte tilbringe den første natten i et husly som var skittent og befengt med utøy.

Da Fransiska møtte erkebiskop Corrigan, fikk hun vite at på grunn av uenighet mellom ham og velgjørersken, grevinne Cesnola, hadde barnehjemsplanen blitt avblåst. Hun ble også presentert for en mengde elever, men ingen skolebygning. Erkebiskopens mente at prosjektet nå var urealistisk og anbefalte henne å reise tilbake til Italia med samme skip som hun kom med og som fortsatt lå i havnen. Med karakteristisk bestemthet slo hun fast: «Nei, monsignore. Paven sendte meg hit, og her må jeg bli». I løpet av få uker hadde hun blitt venner med grevinnen, forsonet henne med erkebiskop Corrigan, funnet et hus for søstrene og startet barnehjemmet i beskjeden skala. I juli 1889 var hun i stand til å besøke Italia igjen, og tok da med seg de to første italiensk-amerikanske rekruttene til sin kongregasjon.

Ni måneder senere vendte hun tilbake til USA med forsterkninger, og i 1890 flyttet det voksende barnehjemmet til et hus hun overtok fra jesuittene i West Park ved Hudson River. Der etablerte hun novisiatet og moderhuset for kongregasjonen i USA. Arbeidet bar raskt frukter både blant innvandrere i USA og blant folket hjemme i Italia, og snart måtte moder Cabrini foreta en strabasiøs reise til Managua i Nicaragua, hvor hun under vanskelige og til dels farlige omstendigheter overtok et barnehjem og startet en internatskole. På tilbakeveien besøkte hun New Orleans etter anmodning fra erkebiskopen der, Frans Janssens. Det førte til at hun kunne foreta en grunnleggelse i New Orleans.

En av hennes mest berømte grunnleggelser skjedde i New York. Under en epidemi der ble hun bedt om å starte et sykehus. Først nektet hun og sa at hun var lærer, ikke sykepleier. Men så hadde hun en drøm hvor hun så Jomfru Maria hjelpe de syke. Da hun spurte Maria hvorfor hun gjorde det, svarte hun at det var fordi Moder Cabrini hadde nektet å gjøre det. Columbus-hospitalet der fikk sitt navn fordi det ble grunnlagt i 1892, da Amerika feiret 400-årsjubileet for Columbus' oppdagelse av kontinentet.

Etter et besøk i Italia, hvor hun fikk oppleve begynnelsen til et «sommerhus» nær Roma og et studentherberge i Genova, måtte hun reise til Costa Rica, Panama og Chile, så over Andesfjellene til Brasil, og deretter til Buenos Aires i Argentina, hvor hun startet en høyskole for jenter. Etter nok en reise til Italia, hvor hun måtte ta seg av en langvarig rettssak for de kirkelige domstoler og stå overfor opptøyer i Milano, dro hun til Frankrike og foretok den første europeiske grunnleggelsen utenfor Italia. Høsten 1898 reiste hun til England. Biskop Bourne av Southwark, som senere ble kardinal, hadde allerede møtt henne i Codogno og ba henne starte et kloster i hans bispedømme, men ingen grunnleggelse ble gjort denne gangen. Senere ble det grunnlagt en skole i Brockley i Kent, nå i Honor Oak.

I løpet av 28 år foretok Fransiska femti grunnleggelser. Det var folkeskoler, høyere skoler, barnehjem og andre karitative institusjoner for forskjellige grupper over hele USA, inkludert fire store sykehus, blant dem Columbus-hospitalet i Chicago i tillegg til det i New York. Særlig tok hun seg av de innvandrerne i USA som ikke klarte seg i sitt nye hjemland, ikke bare sine italienske landsmenn. Til slutt opprettet Fransiska sin ordens moderhus i Chicago. Også i USA sluttet snart mange kvinner seg til kongregasjonen, og de så på Fransiska som det store forbildet. Hun arbeidet ofte tyve timer i døgnet til ære for Jesus Kristus, som hun så i alle hjelpesøkende som kom til henne. Hun reiste frem og tilbake til Europa 24 ganger, det vil si omtrent hvert år, og hun brakte med seg andre søstre til det stadig voksende apostolatet i den nye verden. Motstanden mot disse grunnleggelsene var til dels hard, og alle reisene var en av de største av hennes prøvelser – særlig på grunn av vannskrekken. Men hennes holdning til enhver vanskelighet var: «Hvem gjør dette? Vi eller Vår Herre?»

Moder Cabrini syntes at engelsk var et vanskelig språk å lære, og hun mistet aldri sin italienske aksent, men dette var åpenbart intet handikap. Hun var en kvinne med ekstraordinær evner og målbevissthet, åpenbart den fødte leder. Hun var svært streng og fast, men alltid rettferdig og kjærlig, «en kvinne av god forstand og stor hellighet», som pave Leo XIII sa. Men noen ganger førte hennes ubøyelige prinsipper henne inn i uholdbare situasjoner. Av og til reflekterte hennes handlinger mangler i hennes tidlige utdannelse, som da hun avviste «uekte» barn fra noen av sine skoler. Hun var også uvitende om protestantene og møtte dem for første gang i USA. Fra begynnelsen var hun svært fordomsfull overfor dem, og det tok lang tid før hun anerkjente deres tro og satte pris på det gode i deres liv.

Men hennes og hennes søstres effektivitet ble utviklet til det ytterste, og hennes besluttsomhet og forretningskløkt i nestekjærlighetens navn vant respekt hos de mest stridige og hardhjertede amerikanere. Arbeidet som opprinnelig ble påbegynt for italienske innvandrere, ble utvidet til å gjelde alle uten hensyn til nasjonalitet, og det inkluderte fangene i fengselet Sing Sing. I 1907 fikk kongregasjonens konstitusjoner den endelige godkjennelsen fra Den hellige Stol (den første godkjennelsen ble gitt i 1887), og de åtte første medlemmene fra 1880 hadde økt til over 1000 i åtte land. Moder Cabrini selv fikk amerikansk statsborgerskap i Seattle i 1909.

Fra 1911 begynte Moder Fransiskas helse å svikte, hun var da 61 år og fysisk utslitt. Hun hadde alltid hatt en dårlig helse, men likevel en ustoppelig energi. Men først seks år senere, i 1917, ble helsen alarmerende dårligere. Likevel kom slutten svært plutselig. Utslitt, men fylt av fred og lykke, døde Fransiska Xaviera av malaria den 22. desember 1917 i klosteret ved Columbus-hospitalet i Chicago. Hun døde alene mens hun ventet på lunsj og drev og pakket inn søtsaker som gaver til en italiensk menighetsskole i Chicago. Hennes legeme ble overført til New York, og hennes begravelse ble et triumftog. Etter kisten fulgte over hundre tusen fattige innvandrere, som i henne hadde funnet en elskende mor. Hun ble gravlagt i West Park i New York på et sted hun selv hadde valgt ut. I 1933 ble hennes legeme flyttet til Mother Cabrini High School i New York.

Ved hennes død talte kongregasjonen over 1500 søstre i 67 hus i 8 land. Søstrene, som er kjent som Cabrini-søstre, viet seg til utdanning, sykepleie og omsorg for foreldreløse. Deres virkefelt var utvidet langt ut over det opprinnelige: å tjene italienske innvandrere. Ti år etter hennes død kunne det etterlengtede misjonsarbeidet i Kina begynne i 1927.

Helligkåringsprosessen ble innledet allerede elleve år etter hennes død, og hun ble saligkåret den 13. november 1938 av pave Pius XI (1922-39). Den 7. juli 1946 ble hun helligkåret av pave Pius XII (1939-58) som den første helgen som var statsborger av USA, og der ble hun kjent som «First Citizen Saint». Den 8. september 1950 utnevnte pave Pius henne til skytshelgen for alle innvandrere. Hennes minnedag er dødsdagen 22. desember; i USA feires hun den 13. november.

Kilder: Attwater/John, Attwater/Cumming, Farmer, Jones, Bentley, Lodi, Butler, Butler (XII), Benedictines, Delaney, Bunson, Day, Ball (1), Cruz (2), Jones (2), Engelhart, Schauber/Schindler, Gorys, Dammer/Adam, Index99, KIR, CSO, Patron Saints SQPN, Infocatho, Bautz, Heiligenlexikon - Kompilasjon og oversettelse: p. Per Einar Odden - Opprettet: 2000-02-01 21:34 - Sist oppdatert: 2005-08-24 21:33

SOURCE : https://www.katolsk.no/biografier/historisk/fcabrini

Voir aussi : http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=278

http://www.clairval.com/lettres/fr/2003/12/08/5101203.htm

http://www.exultet.net/eshop/pages-product_music_info/product-1302/louis-de-beaumont-francoise-xavier-cabrini-sainte.html

ICONOGRAPHIE CHRÉTIENNE

samedi 22 décembre 2012

Sainte FRANCESCA SAVIERO CABRINI, vierge religieuse missionnaire et fondatrice de l'Ordre des Soeurs Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur

Archives du blog

Qui êtes-vous ?