Mother Cabrini was an Italian-born nun who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a religious institute that did much in the areas of education, health and care for orphans and the poor, initially in the United States and then all over the world.
Maria Francesca Cabrini was born in 1850 in the Lombardy province of Lodi, Italy. The daughter of Agostino and Stella Cabrini, who were farmers, she was the youngest of 13 children, only four of whom survived beyond adolescence.
Born two months prematurely, she was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health all her life.
Already as a child she had a great love for the missions. At 13 she attended a school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, graduating five years later with a teaching certificate.
After her parents died in 1870, Maria asked for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, but the sisters, her former teachers, reluctantly told her she was too frail for their life.
Later she became the headmistress of the House of Providence, an orphanage in Codogno, where she taught and gathered together a small community of women.
She took religious vows in 1877 and added Saverio (Xavier) to her name, in honour of St Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary. She had planned like him to be a missionary in the Far East.
In November 1880, she and seven other women who had taken religious vows with her founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC).
She wrote the rule and constitutions of the institute and was its superior general until her death.
The sisters took in orphans and foundlings, and opened a day school to help pay the expenses. They taught needlework and sold their fine embroidery to earn more money.
The institute established seven homes and a school and nursery in their first five years. Their good work brought them to the attention of the bishop of Piacenza, Giovanni Scalabrini, and of Pope Leo XIII.
In 1887 Mother Cabrini went to seek the pope’s approval to establish missions in China. Instead, the pope urged her to go to the United States to help the Italian immigrants who were going there in great numbers and were suffering much poverty.
Acceding to his request, she and six other sisters set off for the US, arriving in New York City in March, 1889. There she encountered many difficulties and disappointments.
The archbishop was not immediately supportive, but he found them housing in a convent of the Sisters of Charity.
Soon, with the archbishop’s permission, she founded the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum in rural West Park, New York.
She organised catechism and general education classes for the Italian immigrants and looked after the needs of the orphans.
Despite great odds, she established other schools and orphanages. Because of her good work, she was able to find people who would donate what she needed in money, time, labour and support.
In New York she founded Columbus Hospital, which later merged with Italian Hospital to become Cabrini Medical Centre in 1973.
In Chicago she opened Columbus Hospital in Lincoln Park and Columbus Extension Hospital, which was later renamed St Cabrini Hospital, in the heart of the Italian neighbourhood.
Over the years she founded 67 missionary institutions to serve the sick and the poor in many American cities, as well as in Latin America and Europe.
In 1926, nine years after her death, the Missionary Sisters were able to fulfil Mother Cabrini’s goal of becoming missionaries in China.
Mother Cabrini died in Columbus Hospital in Chicago from chronic endocarditis at the age of 67, on 22 December 1917.
Her body was interred in the orphanage she founded in West Park, New York, which later became Saint Cabrini Home.
In 1933 it was exhumed as part of the beatification process and different parts of it were kept in places where she had lived and worked including the motherhouse of her congregation in Rome.
She was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1938 and canonised by Pope Pius XII in 1946.
