Painting of Mother Cabrini*

Saint Frances Cabrini Where did this frail, sickly woman the the strength to do all that she did? Through prayer.

  
Virtue:  Theological Virtue of Hope
               (expectation of and desire of receiving; not giving up)

 

St. Frances was born in Lombardi, Italy in 1850, one of thirteen children. As a child, she dreamed about being a missionary in China. At eighteen, she tried to join two different convents but, because of her poor health, she was not accepted. 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. Frances had her set on going to China, but it seemed that God wanted her to go to America instead. When Pope Leo XIII told her , "Go west, no East" 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.
 
*Note: This painting of Mother Cabrini as the Patron Saint of Immigrants is a mural (drawn by Gonippo Raggi) in the chapel of an orphanage run by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and is used with their permission.