After founding the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Italy, she went to the United States at the pope's urging to serve immigrants. She established dozens of schools, hospitals, and orphanages and was the first U.S. citizen to be canonized.
Life
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini was born in Lombardy, Italy, in 1850. Turned away by religious orders more than once because of poor health, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus herself in 1880. She had dreamed of mission in China, but at the urging of Pope Leo XIII she went to New York in 1889 to serve Italian immigrants.
She founded schools, orphanages and hospitals across the United States and Latin America, becoming a mother to immigrants. She became a U.S. citizen in 1909 and died in Chicago in 1917. Canonized in 1946, she was the first U.S. citizen to be declared a saint and is honored as patron of immigrants. The Church in the United States remembers her on November 13.
Spirituality
Cabrini's spirituality is bold love born of trust in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Despite frail health and a fear of water, she crossed the ocean dozens of times and began works in places where she had neither money nor connections. She believed she could do all things not by her own strength but through Christ.
Reflection
Cabrini became a mother to immigrants in a strange American land. As immigrants ourselves, what warm welcome can I offer to newcomers among us?