The First American in the Eternal Hall of Fame
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - November 16, 2007
On Tuesday, we celebrated the feast of the first American canonized saint.
Born in 1850 near the Italian city of Lodi, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini had a hunger for holiness from her earliest days and a deep desire to be a missionary. The youngest of 13 children, her family would read each night from the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and her young heart became inflamed. She voluntarily decided to give up sweets, because she discovered that in China there would be no Italian delicacies. She used to dress her dolls as nuns. She used to make paper boats, fill them with flowers symbolizing the flourishing life of missionaries, and float them down the river.
After the death of both of her parents when she was 18, she applied to enter various religious communities but was refused because her health was poor. Eventually her parish priest, who appreciated her piety, zeal and organizational ability, asked her to help save a mismanaged orphanage. She assented and did all she could, forming around her a community of women to assist in the work, but after three years of hard work the charitable institution was not able to be resuscitated.
But it was through that grain of wheat's falling to the ground that Frances' life-long aspiration was able to be fulfilled. Her bishop summoned her and said, "I know you want to be a missionary. Now is the time. I don't know any institute of missionary sisters, so found one yourself." And with the group of seven women who had collaborated with her at the orphanage, she did: the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, erected to seek the Christian education of girls.
It was suggested to her by many that her new community should head to the United States to work among the Italian immigrants. In the 1880s, there were 50,000 Italians in New York City alone, but fewer the 1,200 had ever been to a Mass or learned the elements of Christian doctrine. Ten of the 12 priests working among them had been kicked out of their Italian dioceses for problems.
Archbishop Corrigan of New York wrote her a formal letter asking her assistance, but at first she wouldn't hear of it. She had set her heart on evangelizing China. But one night she had a powerful dream that induced her to consult Pope Leo XIII himself. The holy and wise pontiff, after hearing of the dream and her discernment, told her, in words that would change the history of Catholicism in America, "Not to the East, but to the West." With six of her sisters, she set off for New York in 1889.
When they arrived, a poor and humbling reception awaited them. They had been asked initially to organize an Italian orphanage and elementary school, but during their voyage, the benefactress underwriting the institutions had reneged on her commitments. There was no place for them or the orphans to live and no building for them to hold classes. Archbishop Corrigan told Mother Cabrini it was probably best for her and her sisters to return to Italy.
Despite her disappointment at the chaos she found in New York, this tiny, strongly-accented Lombardian replied with a determination that ever after impressed the prelate, "No. The pope sent me here, and here I must stay."
From that point forward, Mother took some matters into her own hands. She went to see the benefactress to persuade her to change her mind, brought about her reconciliation with the archbishop, founded a house for the sisters and successfully began the orphanage.
She began to receive vocations to her community almost immediately and that allowed her community's apostolate to spread far and wide.
She soon opened up a hospital in New York and several institutions in New Orleans, where the integration of Italians was going particularly poorly.
Requests for her help were coming from all over the world, and she traveled with sisters to open up homes, schools, hospitals and orphanages in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, France and England.
She also founded institutions in most American cities where there was a heavy concentration of Italian immigrants.
By 1907, when the constitutions of her community were finally approved, there were more than a thousand sisters working in over fifty institutions in eight countries.
She died ten years later at the age of 67 while visiting her community in Chicago and in 1946, she became the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. Her future canonization had been foretold by Pope Leo XIII fifty years before when, asked about her, he replied, "Mother Cabrini is a woman of fine understanding and great holiness. She is a saint."
Mother Cabrini's sanctity was seen in her willingness to put out into the deep waters and lower her nets for a catch for Christ all over the globe. As a little girl, she had fallen into a river and almost drowned. Despite her fear of water from that point forward, she spent much of her adult life aboard ship sailing across rough seas or over rivers to open schools for the fish she and her community would catch in those nets.
She models for us the courage and creativity needed in the new evangelization. She teaches us that the new evangelization needs to happen through institutions for young people. She demonstrates for her fellow American citizens how to be true citizens of heaven (Phil 3:20).
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
