Italian American Heritage Month: Mother Cabrini

Mother Cabrini

She was a woman way ahead of her time. Born outside Milan in 1850, Francis Xavier Cabrini adhered to  Pope Leo XIII's request and moved to America in the late 1880s to serve the millions of Italian immigrants who were pouring into our country. She founded her first American orphanage in upstate New York in 1890. But this was a woman who refused to stay put as she fielded calls to help the abandoned, sick and destitute across the country and even around the world. She was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1909 and came to represent all such immigrants. Mother Cabrini died in one of her own hospitals in Chicago eight years later. This devout, courageous woman left behind a legacy of more than five dozen schools, orphanages and hospitals built. She became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized in 1946, finding her place in the firmament as the patron saint of immigrants.

Part of a month long series spotlighting a different accomplished Italian American every day during Italian American Heritage Month.