Mother Cabrini - Patroness of immigrants
Like many of you, I have immigrant roots as an American citizen. My great grandparents on both sides immigrated to the United States from Germany.
Yesterday, we celebrated the feast day of the first canonized American saint, Mother Frances Cabrini from Italy. (She was Italian-born and became a U.S. citizen).
This little Italian nun managed to accomplish extraordinary things, especially for the immigrant population, in spite of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment that was still strong here and her sometimes frail health.
Here's the blurb on her from the Magnificat devotional magazine:
Frances
Cabrini was born in the Lombardy region of Italy. She took private
religious vows at age twenty-seven, adding “Xavier” to her name in honor
of the great Jesuit missionary to the East. In 1880, she founded the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the aim of
evangelizing in China, yet Pope Leo XIII advised her to go “not to the
east, but to the west.” Arriving in New York in 1889, she founded an
orphanage for children of Italian immigrants. Schools, hospitals, and a
prison ministry followed. Frances died in 1917, having established
sixty-seven institutes of the order in the United States, Europe, and
Central and South America. She is the patroness of immigrants.
We pray today for all those helping immigrants to our land and especially that many of them will come to embrace Jesus Christ and His Church through the intercession of Mother Cabrini.
