Patron Saint of Immigrants

Maria Francesca Cabrini was born prematurely on July 15, 1850, in the small Italian village of Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy. On the day she was born, a flock of doves circled their home. Villagers noted that white doves had never been seen in their town before that day. The family considered the arrival of the doves an omen of grace and purity preceding her remarkable life. From childhood, Frances wanted to be a missionary and launched paper boats filled with violets into a stream, imagining the violets were missionaries traveling to foreign countries, especially China. As a teenager, she was turned away by two religious communities due to her frail health, a problem she bore throughout her life. She studied to become a schoolteacher, and a bishop, valuing her desire to serve, asked her to lend a hand for a few weeks at a poorly run orphanage. This lasted six years before she was urged to start her own missionary order of women, as there was no such order. These women called themselves the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

In 1887 she met Pope Leo XIII, and even though he was aware of her desire to do missionary work in China, he persuaded her to go to America to assist the many Italian immigrants there who were in dire need. From an early age, after a frightening experience of near drowning, Mother Cabrini had a real fear of water; yet in her missionary travels she crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than two dozen times, traveling to the United States, Central America, and South America. From her earliest days, she had this "vision of mission," and she sacrificed all in order to do the will of God through the institute she founded.

Immigrants needed to learn the language and skills, so she built schools. Immigrants needed quality healthcare, so she built hospitals and clinics. Immigrant children who were either abandoned or orphaned needed care, so she built orphanages. Immigrants who were moved and received a calling joined her, so she built convents. She built communities for some of the most vulnerable people. Mother Cabrini was a businesswoman and a world traveler, keenly aware of the currents of thought in the world of her time. At the time of her death on December 22, 1917, at age 67, she had founded 67 institutions.

The mural located in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NY was created by Adam Cvijanovic and pays tribute to generations of immigrants who came to New York in search of faith and hope. The mural prominently features Mother Cabrini who arrived in New York on March 31, 1889