On 7 July 1947, Pope Pius XII canonised St Frances Xavier Cabrini, a Roman Catholic nun, making her the first US citizen to become a Roman Catholic saint. The miracles for which sainthood was conferred on her included restoring the sight of a day-old baby and curing a terminally ill member of her congregation. However, another reason for her canonisation was to forge relations between Italy and the United States and to reach out to influential Italian-Americans.
Maria Francesca Cabrini was born two months early in July 1850 in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, in the Lombardy province of Lodi, Italy. She took a vow of chastity at the age of 11 and was unable to complete her studies at a school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Milan because of ill health, devoting herself to helping orphans and teaching. On 4 July 1880, she opened a convent that became the foundation of the new Congregation “Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”.
On 31 March 1889, Mother Cabrini, as she had come to be known, moved to New York with seven other sisters and they began to work with Italian immigrants. In 1892, she opened an orphanage in New Orleans and a school in Brooklyn and the Columbus Hospital in New York. She became a naturalised US citizen in 1909, and from 1895 she opened a number of educational and medical institutions in Buenos Aires, Paris, Chicago, Madrid, Milan, London, New Jersey, Seattle and Los Angeles.
She died in 1917, leaving 67 monastic houses and some 3000 followers. She was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 13 November 1938 and the boy whose sight she restored was Peter Smith who grew up to become a Roman Catholic priest. In the United States, she is considered the patron saint of immigrants, and an advocate for finding a parking space: as one priest says: "She lived in New York, so she knows about traffic".
Pope Pius XII strongly needed US support and financial help from Italian-Americans, and this is why the canonisation of Saint Frances is also considered a timely political move. There is a shrine to St Frances Xavier Cabrini in New York City's Upper Manhattan. A neighbourhood in Chicago, originally populated by Italian immigrants, was named after her.
Source: Giacomo Galeazzi, “Bertone: Noi ex migrantii”, LaStampa.it 10. 13. 2010.
