Memorial of Saint Francesca (Frances) Xavier Cabrini, Virgin

Born on July 15, 1850, in a small village, S’ant Angelo Lodigiano near the city of Milan, Italy, Maria Francesca was one of 13 children. Educated by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, Francesca received her teaching certificate under their guidance, but, because of her frail health, she was not permitted to join their order. A local bishop, however, recognized Francesca’s eagerness to serve and encouraged her to begin her own religious community.  Thus, at the age of 30, Francesca, along with seven other young women, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She spent several years developing the order and expanding their missions throughout Italy, founding several schools, orphanages, and even a hospital.
 
Francesca visited Rome to obtain an audience with Pope Leo XIII to ask permission for members of her order to serve as missionaries in China, but he told her “not to go to the East, but to the West,” to the United States of America where thousands of Italian immigrants needed care in New York. When Mother Francesca Cabrini and her six sister companions arrived in New York in 1889, they found tremendous chaos and poverty, but they quickly went to work organizing catechism and education classes for the Italian immigrants. Within two years, the sisters helped open Columbus Hospital on East 19th Street and secured land for an out-of-town home for the orphans in upstate West Park, New York.  She became a U.S. citizen in 1909.  
 
Eventually, Mother Cabrini traveled to Europe, Central and South America, and across the U.S., including Colorado. The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus established 67 institutions, schools, hospitals, and orphanages across the world. Mother Cabrini died on December 22, 1917, in Chicago. Pope Pius XII canonized her in 1946, making her the first U.S. citizen to be canonized, and she was named the patron of immigrants in 1950. Saint Francesca Xavier Cabrini, pray for us!