Frances Xavier Cabrini

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini MSC
Virgin
Born	Maria Francesca Cabrini (1850-07-15)July 15, 1850 Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, Austrian Empire
Died	December 22, 1917(1917-12-22) (aged 67) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Resting place	St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine, Upper Manhattan, New York, United States
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Beatified	November 13, 1938 by Pope Pius XI
Canonized	July 7, 1946 by Pope Pius XII
Major shrine	National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Chicago Mother Cabrini Shrine, Golden, Colorado St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine, New York City
Feast	November 13 (US, 1961 to date) December 22 (elsewhere)
Patronage	Immigrants

Frances Xavier Cabrini MSC (Italian: Francesca Cabrini (birth name), July 15, 1850 – December 22, 1917), also known as Mother Cabrini, was a prominent Italian-American religious sister in the Roman Catholic Church. She is the first American to be recognized as a saint.

Cabine founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC), a religious institute that today provides education, health care, and other services to the poor in 15 nations. During her lifetime, Cabrini established 67 schools, orphanages and other social service institutions in Italy, the United States and other nations.

Born in Italy, Cabrini migrated to the United States in 1887. Despite anti-Italian prejudice and opposition within the Catholic Church, she successfully established charitable institutions in New York City for poor Italian immigrants. He later extended these efforts to Italian immigrant populations across the United States. Catholic leaders were soon calling on her to create missions in Latin America and Europe.

Cabrini became a naturalized American citizen in 1909. After her death in 1917, her order started a campaign for her sainthood. The Vatican beatified Cabrini in 1938 and canonized her a saint in 1946. The Vatican in 1950 named her as the patron saint of immigrants.

Life in Italy

Early years

She was born Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850, in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in the Province of Lodi of Lombardy, then part of the Austrian Empire. She was the youngest of the 13 children of farmer Agostino Cabrini and his wife Stella Oldini. Only four of her siblings survived beyond adolescence.

Born two months prematurely, Frances Cabrini was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health throughout her life. During her childhood, she visited an uncle, Don Luigi Oldini of Livraga, a priest who lived beside a canal. While in Livrage, she made little paper boats, dropped violets she called "missionaries" in the boats, and launched them in the stream to sail to India and China. Cabrina made her first holy communion at age nine.On one occasion, she fell into the river and was swept downstream. Her rescuers found on a riverbank. Cabrini attributed her rescue to divine intervention.

Arluno, Italy, where Cabrine attended school (2014)

Cabrini's older sister Rosa was a teacher, which influenced her to follow the same career path. At age 13, Cabrini attended a school in Arluno, Lombardy, that was run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1868, she graduated cum laude from the school with a teaching certificate and came home to teach at the parish school. She worked for three more years as a substitute teacher in Vidardo.

After Cabrini's parents died in 1870, she applied for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno. However, the sisters rejected Cabrini because they believed her health wasn't strong enough. In 1872, while working with the sick during a smallpox outbreak, she contracted the disease. later contracted smallpox and was rejected by the Canossian Sisters of Crema, again due to health reasons. It was reported, however, that officials in Carbrini's parish asked the two orders to deny her application because they did not want to lose her as a teacher at their school.

Orphanage in Italy

Bishop Scalabrini

In 1874,a priest in Codogno, Lombardy, invited Cabrini to take over a poorly-run orphanage in that town. That same year, Cabrini was accepted in the Sisters of Providence religious order and took religious vows. She added Xavier (Saverio in Italian) to her name to honor Reverend Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionary service. Like Xavier, Cabrini still wanted to become a missionary in East Asia.While at the orphanage, she assembled a small community of women with the aim of creating a religious home. However, the two sisters in charge of the orphanage finances were jealous of Cabrini and worked to thwart her actions. The orphanage and the local Sisters of Providence chapter dissolved in 1880.

In 1880, the bishop of the Diocese of Lodi, Domenico Gelmini, told Cabrini that she should pursue her dream of becoming a missionary, but that did not know of any religious orders that would train them. Cabrini said she would start her own order. That same year, Cabrini bought a former Franciscan convent in Codogno. In November 1880, she and several other women left the orphanage to found the Institute of the Salesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. At the Codogno convent, the MSC sisters took in orphans and foundlings, opened a day school, started classes in needlework, and sold their fine embroidery. The institute eventually established seven homes, a free school and nursery in Lombardy in its first five years.

In 1887, with the blessing of Bishop Giovanni Scalabrini, Cabrini opened a convent in Castel San Giovanni in the Diocese of Piaenza. Scalabrini had recently found the Scalabrinian Missionaries, an order of priests performing missionary work with Italian immigrants in New York. He believed that Cabrini's order would be of tremendous assistance to them in their work. He asked Calabrini if she would open an orphanage in New York. Countess Mary Reid DiCesnola, a wealthy Catholic socialite in Manhattan, had been relentlessly petitioning both the pope and Archbishop Michael Corrigan for the establishment of a New York orphanage for Italian girls, which she would fund. Still wanting to go to Asia, she still allowed Scalabrini set up a meeting for her with Pope Leo XIII.

Papal recognition

Mother Cabrini meets Pope Leo XII (1887). Fresco by Luigi Arzuffi, at the Our Lady of the Assumption Church, Caselle Landi, Italy

In September 1887, Cabrini went to Rome to meet Leo XII. She asked him for permission to set up a convent in Rome, which he readily agreed to. She also asked for permission to sents missions to Asia. However, Leo XII was thinking of a different destination.

During the 1880s, the pope and the rest of the Roman Curia were worried about the large numbers of impoverish Italian immigrants emigrating to New York. Leo was concerned that these Catholics would leave the church unless they received assistance. Instead of allowing Cabrini to go to China, Leo XII told her, go "...not to the East, but to the West..." to New York City.In December 1888, Cabrine committed to going to New York. The pope also recognized the MSC as a missionary institute, the first group of Italian religious sisters to receive that approval. Scalabrini promised Cabrini that the Scalabrinians would greet them in New York and take care of their needs.

Mission in New York

Arrival

Corrigan wrote to Cabrini in February 1889, welcoming her to the city, but advising her to delay her departure to allow more preparation. However, she missed that letter. At age 38, Cabrini left for the United States, arriving in New York City on March 31, 1889, along with six other sisters. Arriving in New York, the MSC sisters discovered that the Scalabrinians were not at the dock and that they had failed to set up accomodations for them. The sisters spent their first night in the United States in a decrepit rooming house with bed bugs in the mattresses, forcing them to sleep on chairs.

During this period, the Catholic hierarchy and clergy in New York City were dominated by Irish immigrants who share a common prejudice against Italians, considering them superstitious and almost pagan. Many parishes segregated Italian worshippers in church basements and the archdiocese had very few Italian priests.Corrigan, also Irish, believed that only men were suitable for missionary work with immigrants. He wanted Italian priests, not religious sisters.

Meeting with archbishop

Archbishop Corrigan (before 1902)

The day after arriving in New York, Cabrini and the other sisters walked into Corrigan's office. Totally surprised that they were in New York, Sullivan told Cabrini that the archdiocese was unready for them and that they should immediately return to Italy. Cabrini refused to go back, simply saying, “I have letters from the pope.” and gave her letters of introduction to Corrigan. His hands tied, Corrigan could not force them to leave.

He asked Cabrini to establish a schools for Italians first and wait on the orphanage. After the meeting, the Sisters of Charity in the Bronx gladly provided residence for Cabrine and her entourage at their convent. The Scalabrinian priests later provided a rundown convent for the MSC sisters in the Five Points area of Manhattan.

Mission work

Little Italy, New York City (1900)

Soon after their arrival in the city, the MSC sisters started experiencing degrading, anti-Italian slurs and insults. Cabrini wrote back to the sisters in Italy, asking that they send over fabrics for the making of more veils and habits. She wanted the sisters to be cleanly dressed, “otherwise they will call us ‘guinea-pigs’ the way they do to the Italians here.”Cabrini and her sisters started knocking on tenement doors in Little Italy in Manhattan. Many Italians in New York were suspicious of the institutional Catholic Church, sentiments fostered by the government of the newly unified of Italy. Their loyalties lay more with their personal sains. In addition, as most of the immigrants came from Sicily, Calabria and other southern regions, they were initially suspicious of the MSC sisters, who came from Lombardy.

With the help of other female religious orders, the MSC sisters started tending the sick, teaching children and feeding the hungry. They set up a make-shift school for 200 children in the balcony of a local Catholic church. Soon the neighborhood merchants started providing the sisters with food and funding to support their mission.

With Corrigan's blessing and funding from DiCesnola, Cabrini opened the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum, her first orphanage in the United States, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. However, the high cost of running the institution in the city, plus increasing friction with Corrigan, soon prompted Cabrini to move the orphanage to the countryside.

First orphanage in United States

St. Cabrini Home, West Park, New York (1890)

In 1890, Cabrini purchase a property from the Jesuits in West Park, New York, where she relocated the orphanage. She also established a novitiate for her order on the property. The West Park campus The asylum later became St. Cabrini Home, the headquarters for the order in the United States and a boarding school. Other orphanages in the United States would force girls to leave once they turned age 14. Cabrini refused to do that at her orphanages. She insisted that the orphanage only discharge the girls if they were placed with an adoptive family or trained to earn an independent living.

Cabrini once wrote

“What we as women cannot do on a large scale to help solve grave social ills is being done in our small sphere of influence in every state and city where we have opened houses.In them we shelter and care for orphans, the sick and the poor.”

Although she moved the MSC order to West Park, she continued to be involved in work in New York City. She was still unable to set up a school in New York, stymied by again by the Scalabrinians. However, she joined with them in the building of the first hospital in New York for Italians in 1890. She brought ten MSC sisters from Italy to staff the hospital, which opened in 1891.

Other missions

New Orleans lynching of 11 Italian immigrants (1891)

As Cabrini's reputation grew, she started receiving requests for help on Catholic projects outside New York for both Italian and non-Italian Catholics . She traveled in 1891 to Nicaragua to open a religious house. While there, she traveled by boat into a remote area to visit a settlement of Miskito people. She then sailed to Grenada to start a school. Arriving in Chile, she went by mule over the Andes Mountains to found schools in Brazil and Argentina.

The final destination in her trip was to New Orleans in 1892, where she set up another school for Italians. The area was a hotbed of anti-Catholic sentiment, combined with racial discrimination against immigrants from Southern Italy, who did not "look White" In 1891, a large mob forcibly removed 11 Italian men in jail for allegedly murdering the New Orleans police chief and killed them. The sisters established a mission in the poorest Italian neighborhood in the city.

Cabrini was forced to return to New York from New Orleans in later 1892. This was because the Scalabrinian hospital was facing collapse due to the order's financial mismanagement. She pulled the sisters from that hospital and with $250 started her own hospital in New York, the Columbus Hospital, in 1892. Tired of the incompetence of the Scalabrinian Missionaries, she cut all ties between them and her own order.

During the early 1890s, Cabrini established schools for Italian communities in Manhattan, the Bronx, Newark, New Jersey, and Scranton, Pennsylvania. Cabrini returned to Louisiana in 1895 started establishing missions among the large population of Italian immigrants in rural Louisiana. They established missions in Metairie, Harvey Canal and Kenner, traveling by mule through rural towns and villages. They would visit hospitals and act as interpreters for Italian patients who could not speak English.

While in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1896, Cabrini made these comments about how she coped with her work.

“Prayer and interior silence are great necessities for the person who is occupied with a thousand concerns: speaking, listening, hearing, giving of herself even to many good things...Prayer and silence bring her to that mystical rest."

Later years

Cabrini arrived in Chicago in 1899 to work with the large Italian population in that city. Her next stop in 1902 was in Denver, Colorado, followed by a trip to Seattle, Washington, in 1903.

In 1907, Cabrini stopped in Philadelphia to have dinner with Mother Katherine Drexel, who had established numerous Catholic missions and schools through the United States for African-Americans and Native Americans. Cabrini had wanted to personally thank Drexel for her helping an MSC sister in Philadelphia. In a very amiable conversation, Drexel said that the Vatican bureaucracy was stymieing her order on a legal matter. Believing in direct action, Cabrini told Drexel to personally go to Rome and stay there until it was resolved. Drexel took her advice and succeeded in her mission.

Cabrini was naturalized as a United States citizen in 1909. She made this move to assure the legal foundation of her order after her death and to demonstrate solidarity with the Americans that she served.

Cabrini in 1911 opened a second Columbus Hospital in the Italian neighborhood in Lincoln Park in Chicago . However, some neighbors were unhappy with the hospital, fearing that it would lower property values. During its construction in the winter, a vandal cut the water mains, flooding the construction site. When the Columbus Extension Hospital was being built on the Near West Side, an arson attack on its grounds was thwarted.

On one of her final trips, Cabrini visited Southern California in 1916. She constructed a shrine above the San Fernando Valley on Mount Raphael to protect the residents from wildfires. It was relocated in 1970 to Burbank, California, to become Mother Cabrini Shrine there.

Death and legacy

Columbus Hospital, Chicago, Illinois (1922)

In failing health, Cabrini traveled to Chicago in 1917 to be cared for by the MSC sisters there. On December 21st, 1917, she was wrapping sweets she bought with her personal funds as Christmas gifts for children at the Italian school. She died suddenly the next day from chronic endocarditis at age 67 at Columbus Hospital.

Cabrini's body lay in state at Columbus Hospital until December 26th, when it was transported to New York City by train. She lay in state in New York until December 31st; on January 1st, 1918, Cabrini was interred at the Saint Cabrini Home in West Park. Her remains were exhumed and removed in 1933.

During her lifetime, Cabrini founded 67 orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the United States, in Latin America and the Caribbean region, and in Europe. In 1926, the MSC achieved Cabrini's original goal of sending missionaries to China.

Veneration

Statue of Cabrini with Christ

In 1921, Peter Smith was born in Columbus Hospital in New York. He was blinded when a nurse accidentally administered a 50% silver nitrate solution into his eyes. The doctors said that Smith's corneas were destroyed and that he was permanently blind. The mother superior of the hospital later touched a relic of Cabrini to his eyes and pinned a medal of cabrini to his gown. The nurse who gave Smith the eyedrops prayed to Cabrini to help him. When the doctors examined Smith 72 hours later, his eyes were normal. Smith then survived a severe bout of pneumonia. The Vatican cited this case as a miracle in 1938.

Sister Delphina Grazioli, an MSC sister, was dying after four surgical procedure in Seattle from 1925 to 1929. She saw a vision of Cabrini and then made a miraculous recovery. The Vatican accepted this also in 1938 as a miracle from Cabrini.

In 1933, the MSC exhumed Cabrini's body and divided it as part of her canonization process. They sent her head to the chapel of the congregation's motherhouse in Rome. Her heart went to Codogno and her arm bone to the National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago. The sisters sent most of her body to the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in New York City.

Citing the Smith and Grazioli cures, Pope Pius XI beatified Cabrini on November 13, 1938. Smith, now a priest, attended the ceremony. Pope Pius XII canonized Cabrini on July 7, 1946. After Cabrini was canonized, an estimated 120,000 people attended a mass of thanksgiving at Soldier Field in Chicago.

In 1950, Pius XII named Cabrini as the patron saint of immigrants, recognizing her efforts worldwide to build schools, orphanages and hospitals.Pope Francis has stated that Cabrini's charitable works in Argentina inspired him to become a priest.

In the Roman Martyrology, Cabrini's feast day is December 22th, the anniversary of her death. This is the day ordinarily chosen as a saint's feast day. Following the reforms in Pope John XXIII's Code of Rubrics in 1960, the United States has celebrated Cabrini's feast day on November 13th, her beatification day. This change was made to avoid conflicting with the greater ferias of Advent.

Shrines

National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago, Illinois (2017)

Main article: National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

The National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini is located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. When the shrine was founded in 1955, it was located within the Columbus Hospital complex in Chicago. Cabrini had founded the hospital in 1905, lived and worked there, and died there in 1917. After Cabrini's canonization in 1946, the archdiocese decided that it needed a shrine in her honor. When the hospital was demolished for a high rise development in 2002, the shrine closed for ten years. It was relocated next to the new development, renovated and reopened in 2012.

The shrine was re-dedicated by Cardinal Francis George on September 30, 2012, It contains gold mosaics, Carrara marble, frescoes, and Florentine stained glass,. It also preserve the hospital room from the Columbus Hospital where Cabrini died. Visitors use the shrine today for worship, spiritual care, and pilgrimage.

Mother Cabrini Shrine

Stone House at Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colorado (2014)

Main article: Mother Cabrini Shrine

The Mother Cabrini Shrine is located on Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado. Cabrini purchased the property in 1910 to serve as a summer camp for the girls from her Queen of Heaven Orphanage in Denver. She built the Stone House in 1914 to serve as the girls dormitory.

After Cabrini's canonization in 1946, the MSC converted the summer camp into the Mother Cabrini Shrine. It contains a footpath up Lookout Mountain, marked with the Stations of the Cross, that ends at a 22-foot (7 m) statue of Jesus. The shrine campus includes a convent, visitor accommodations, a chapel and an exhibit of Cabrini artifacts. The statues and stained-glass windows in the chapel originated from the former Villa Cabrini Academy in Burbank, California.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in New York City (2010)

Main article: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine

The St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine, located in Hudson Heights neighborhood of New York City, houses her remains. Cabrini purchased the property in 1899 to establish a school for the girls of wealthy families. In 1930, the MSC established the Mother Cabrini High School on the site. They moved the Cabrini remains in 1938 to a glass-enclosed coffin under the altar of the school chapel.

Cabrini's canonization in 1946 brought a huge influx of visitors to the school chapel. To accommodate them, the sisters in 1960 moved her remains out of the high school to a separate shrine building on the campus. The remains now reside in a large bronze-and-glass reliquary casket in the shrine's altar. Her body is covered with her religious habit and a sculpted face mask and hands for viewing.

Other shrines

Mother Cabrini Shrine in St George's Cathedral, Southwark, London, England (2019)

• The Mother Cabrini Shrine at St George's Cathedral in London, was dedicated by Archbishop Kevin McDonald in 2009. Cabrini had worshipped at St. George while on a visit to London. The shrine occupies a former confessional in the cathedral and contains a bronze sculpture of Carbrini watching over migrants who stand on a pile of suitcases.
• The Mother Cabrini Shrine in Burbank, California is located near the site of the former Villa Cabrini Academy, founded in 1937 by her order. The shrine consists of a chapel that Cabrini founded elsewhere in Burbank in 1916. The Italian Catholic Federation relocated the chapel to St. Francis Xavier Church in 1973 to save it from demolition. The federation added a library wing to the shrine in 1993.
• The Shrine of Mother Cabrini is located on the campus of the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Lewiston, New York.
• Our Lady of Pompeii Church in New York city has a shrine, a statue, and a stained-glass window dedicated to Cabrini. She and her Missionary Sisters taught religious education there.
• The Mother Cabrini Shrine in Peru, New York, is a stone grotto on the grounds of St. Patrick Church. It was dedicated in 1947.

Legacy

Mother Cabrini Mosaic at St. Robert Bellarmine School, Burbank, California (2008)

Churches and parishes

Stained glass window of Mother Cabrini at St. Stephen Church in Chesapeake, Virginia

Italy

• St. Frances Cabrini Parish (parrocchia Santa Francesca Cabrini), Codogno
• St. Frances Cabrini Parish (parrocchia Santa Francesca Cabrini), Lodi
• St. Frances Cabrini Parish (parrocchia Santa Francesca Cabrini), Rome
• St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, 18-foot (5.5 m) statue of "S. Francisca Xaveria Cabrini", included among 39 saints who founded religious congregations

United States

Mother Cabrini

• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Camp Verde, Arizona
• St. Frances Cabrini - Our Lady of Lavang Catholic Church in Tucson, Arizona
• St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in Crestline, California
• St. Frances X Cabrini Catholic Church in Los Angeles, California
• St. Frances Cabrini Parish in San Jose, California
• St. Frances X Cabrini Catholic Church in Yucaipa, California
• St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in North Haven, Connecticut, now part of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity Parish
• St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Parrish, Florida
• St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Parish in Spring Hill, Florida
• St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in St. Cloud, Florida
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Savannah, Georgia
• St. Frances Cabrini Parish in Springfield, Illinois
• St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church in Livonia, Louisiana
• Former St. Frances Cabrini Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, built in 1953 and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005
• Former St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate, Massachusetts, closed in 2004
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Allen Park, Michigan
• Church of St. Frances Cabrini in Minneapolis, Minnesota
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Omaha, Nebraska, a historic landmark and former cathedral
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Ocean City, New Jersey, now part of St. Damien Parish
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Piscataway, New Jersey
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Brooklyn, New York
• St. Frances Cabrini R.C. Church in Coram, New York
• Cabrini Parish in Rochester, New York
• St. Frances Cabrini Church on Roosevelt Island, New York, now part of East River Catholics
• St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Colerain, Ohio
• St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in Lorain, Ohio
• St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. Now part of Mary Queen of Saints Roman Catholic Parish
• St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Community in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
• Mother Cabrini Parish in Shamokin, Pennsylvania
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Lebanon, Tennessee
• St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in El Paso, Texas
• St. Frances Cabrini & St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Granbury, Texas
• Saint Frances Cabrini Mission Church in Hargill, Texas
• St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Houston, Texas
• St. Frances Cabrini Church in Laredo, Texas
• Mother Cabrini Parish in Pharr, Texas
• Saint Frances Cabrini Church in San Antonio, Texas
• St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Parish in Benton City, Washington
• St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Lakewood, Washington
• St. Frances Cabrini Parish in West Bend, Wisconsin

Brazil

São Paulo

• Colégio Madre Cabrini, São Paulo
• Casa Provincial, São Paulo
• Casa Santa Cabrini, São Paulo
• Casa São José, São Paulo
• Casa N. Sra. de Caravaggio, São Paulo
• Casa Sagrado Coração de Jesus, São Paulo
• Centro Social da Criança, Luz (bairro de São Paulo)
• Centro Assistencial Santana, Jd. Ana Lúcia
• Colégio Boni Consilii, Campos Elíseos

Minas Gerais

• Colégio Regina Coeli, Rio Pomba

Rio De Janeiro

• Centro de Formação e Espiritualidade Cabriniana, Tijuca
• Obra Social Santa Cabrini, Tijuca
• Obra Social Santa Cabrini, Vila do João

Piauí

• Centro da Juventude Santa Cabrini, Teresina
• Casa Nossa Senhora das Graças, Cajazeiras

Maranhão

• Casa Fraternidade Irmã Rafaela, Itapecuru-Mirim

Other countries

• Instituto Cabrini in Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Mother Cabrini Catholic School in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada
• Ensemble Scolaire Françoise Cabrini in Noisy-le-Grand, France (former orphanage)
• LPU-St. Cabrini College of Allied Medicine in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines
• Colegio Santa Francisca Javier Cabrini in Madrid, Spain
• St Francesca Cabrini Catholic Primary School in London, United Kingdom
• St Francesca Cabrini Church, Bedford, United Kingdom

Hospitals

Former Cabrini Medical Center, New York City

• St Francis Xavier Cabrini Hospital, opened by MSC in 1958 in Melbourne, Victoria, in Australia. It is now Cabrini Health, a network of hospitals and other facilities.
• Santa Cabrini Hospital, founded in 1958 in Montreal, Quebec, in Canada
• St. Frances Cabrini Medical Center and Cancer Institute in Santo Tomas City, Batangas, in Philippines
• The former St. Cabrini Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1910 as the Columbus Hospital Extension. It became St. Cabrini Hospital in 1946
• Christus St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana, founded shortly after her canonization, and named because Bishop Charles Greco had met her in his childhood
• The former Cabrini Medical Center in New York City. It was formed by a merger with Columbus Hospital. Co-founded by Cabrini in 1892

Film

Cabrini (2024): portrayed by Cristiana Dell'Anna

Institutions with Cabrini name

Cabrini Woods Nature Sanctuary, New York City

• The former St. Cabrini Home in West Park, New York. Was Cabrini's first orphanage, the American MSC headquarters and her original burial place. The facility closed in 2011.
• The Cabrini Museum and Spirituality Center occupies the convent that Cabrini founded in Codogno, Italy in 1880.
• The former Cabrini University in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Founded by the MSC in 1958, it closed in 2024.
• RSA Santa Francesca Cabrini is a residential care facility for the elderly in Codogno.
• The Cabrini Mission Foundation, founded in 1998, supports Cabrini programs worldwide and institutions focused on health care, education, and social services.
• Cabrini of Westchester consists of two residential facilities for the elderly in Manhattan and Dobbs Ferry, New York that are operated by the MSC.
• The Cabrini–Green public housing project in Chicago, built between 1942 and 1962.
• Cabrini Boulevard in Manhattan, New York.
• Cabrini Woods Nature Sanctuary in Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan in New York
• Mother Cabrini Park in Newark, New Jersey. It includes a 1958 statue of Cabrini on the site of a school she founded.
• Mother Cabrini Park in Brooklyn, New York, in 1992, located on the site of a school Cabrini founded.
• The Cabrini-Zentrum near Offenstetten, Germany, is a school and home for orphans and special needs children, with disabilities. It was founded by the MSC in 1946.
• Mother Cabrini Center in the Archdiocese of San Antonio for training religious sisters from other nations.

Honors

• Cabrini was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1996.
• Cabrini was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2022.
• The State of Colorado replaced its Columbus Day state holiday with Cabrini Day in 2020.
• A public memorial to Cabrini installed in 2020 in Battery Park City in Manhattan.
• A mural on the side of Arriana Condominium in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn that was painted in 2012 honors Cabrini and the Italian community.

See also

• American Catholic Servants of God, Venerables, Beatified, and Saints
• Italians in Chicago
• List of Catholic saints
• Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, patron saint archive
• Italian Americans

Bibliography

Nonfiction

• Maynard, Theodore. Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Frances Cabrini. Foreword by Timothy Cardinal Dolan. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024 [original: 1945].
• De Donato, Pietro. Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini. New York: McGraw Hill, 1960.
• De Maria, Mother Saverio. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. Translated by Rose Basile Green. Chicago: Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1984.
• Travels of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini: Foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Edited by Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Chicago: Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1984.

Fiction

• Gregory, Nicole. God's Messenger: The Astounding Achievements of Mother Frances X. Cabrini: A Novel. Washington, D.C.: Barbera Foundation, 2018.

Children and Young Adults

• Keyes, Frances Parkinson. Mother Cabrini: Missionary to the World. Vision Books. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997.
• Andes, Mary Lou and Victoria Dority. Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini: Cecchina's Dream. Illustrated by Barbara Kiwak. Boston: Pauline Books, 2005.

Further reading

• Lorit, Sergio C. Frances Cabrini. New City Press (1975, Second Printing).

External links

• Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Frances Cabrini by Theodore Maynard, with a foreword by Timothy Cardinal Dolan (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024 [1945])
• Works by or about Frances Xavier Cabrini at the Internet Archive
• Frances Xavier Cabrini at Find a Grave
• "Cardinal Spellman Honors Mother Cabrini". Newsreel footage marking her canonization (1946).