Cabrini: A woman on a mission who won’t stay where she ‘belongs’

The first American saint gets the big-screen treatment in Cabrini, a new motion picture set to hit theaters in early March. The film is being distributed by Angel Studios, which produces the multi-season series The Chosen and released the summer blockbuster Sound of Freedom.

Francesca Cabrini, better known as Mother Cabrini or St. Frances Cabrini, was born in Italy in 1850 and, despite her weak constitution, entered religious life and founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the age of 30. She felt a calling to take her nuns to serve the poor in China and throughout Asia. When she requested such permission from Pope Leo XII, however, he told her to go “not to the East, but to the West” — to serve the poor Italian immigrants of New York. 

There she began her work of establishing orphanages, educating children, and lifting up the poor immigrant population, all the while battling the anti-Italian, anti-Catholic bigotry of the day. She also had to assert herself to win at least the begrudging support of Church and civic leaders. Succeeding at that through no small effort, she and her institute went on to establish houses to serve the poor in cities across the United States, into Europe and Latin America and finally — several years after her death in 1917 — in China and beyond. 

She died an Italian-American, having taken U.S. citizenship in 1909 at the age of 59. When canonized in 1946, she became the first American citizen to be declared a saint.

Cabrini covers only a fleeting snapshot of her remarkable life, and the film strongly suggests her lack of support from the Church hierarchy and civic leaders had much to do with the fact she was a woman who sought to go where she didn’t “belong.” There is considerable truth to that. To the credit of both Cabrini and the Church, however, they worked through these issues so that her inspired work could bear fruit for the needy and suffering of the world.