Frances Xavier Cabrini

Frances Xavier Cabrini was born Francesca Cabrini on 15 July 1850 at Sant'Angelo Lodigiano in Lombardy, then belonging to the Austrian Empire and now in Italy. She was the youngest of thirteen children of the farmer Agostino Cabrini and Stella Oldini. Several of her brothers and sisters died in childhood, and she herself remained physically frail throughout her life. A childhood accident in which she nearly drowned left her with a lasting fear of water, yet she would later undertake more than twenty transatlantic crossings in the course of her missionary work. After studies with the Daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno she earned a teaching certificate. When that congregation declined to accept her because of her health, she taught in village schools and, following the death of her parents, was placed in charge of the House of Providence, an orphanage in Codogno.

At Codogno she formed a community of young women committed to education and missionary work. In 1880, with episcopal approval, she founded the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and took the religious name Frances Xavier in honor of St. Francis Xavier, whose example had inspired her since childhood. She hoped to send her sisters to China. In 1887 she traveled to Rome to obtain papal recognition of the institute and permission for an Eastern mission. Pope Leo XIII, aware of the pastoral needs of Italian emigrants in the Americas, directed her instead to the United States. In March 1889 she and six companions arrived in New York.

The first months in America were difficult. Housing promised by local clergy was unavailable, and Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan of New York initially urged the sisters to return to Italy. Cabrini remained, secured a residence, and opened an orphanage and schools for Italian children. Over the following years she founded schools, orphanages, and hospitals in New York, New Orleans, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other American cities, as well as houses in Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, and several European countries. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1909. Despite recurring illness she continued to travel, recruit vocations, and administer her congregation, which by the time of her death numbered hundreds of sisters and some sixty-seven foundations.

Cabrini died on 22 December 1917 at Columbus Hospital in Chicago, which she had founded. Her remains were later transferred to the chapel of what became the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in the Washington Heights section of New York City; a national shrine also commemorates her in Chicago, and her heart is preserved at Codogno in Italy. She was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 13 November 1938 and canonized by Pope Pius XII on 7 July 1946, the first United States citizen to be declared a saint of the Catholic Church. She is honored as patron of immigrants and of hospital administrators, and her feast is kept on 13 November in the United States.