The Italians That Built America: Mother Frances Cabrini
Born Francesca Saverio Cabrini, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint, founded 14 American colleges, 98 schools, 28 orphanages, eight hospitals, three training schools, and a score of other institutions with the help of over 4,000 sisters she recruited for the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, a group she also founded.
Born in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano (Province of Lodi) in 1850, after an audience with Pope Leo XIII, when he had told her to go “not to the East, but to the West”, Mother Cabrini immigrated to New York in 1889 to help the thousands of Italian immigrants already in the US. She later became a US citizen in 1909. Mother Cabrini passed away in Chicago in 1917 and in 1946 was the first naturalized citizen of the US to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Mother Cabrini is the patron saint of
#immigrants.
This past Monday, October 4 was the 75th anniversary of Mother Cabrini becoming the first naturalized American saint. In 2020, the state of Colorado declared the first Monday of October "Mother Cabrini Day", making it the first state holiday named after a woman.
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