Mother Cabrini

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, M.S.C.

1850 - 1867

 

 

            Like Fr. Arnold Damen, the name Cabrini is one that any Chicagoan cannot go very far without coming across, be it a street, former hospital, organization, church, shrine or even Chicago neighborhood. 

              Maria Francesca Cabrini was born in what was then the Lombardy region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1850. She received a degree in teaching but after her parents death followed the call of God in her heart and became a nun and seeing the desperate plight of the poor, the dying and especially the orphaned children, founded a congregation of women religious to serve them. Sr. (now called Mother) Frances Xavier Cabrini called them the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (M.S.C,).

              Mother Cabrini’s initial intention was to serve with her sisters in China but at an audience with Pope Leo XIII in Rome was told not to go east, but west, and serve the Italian immigrants who were suffering great hardships in the United States. Mother Cabrini (even though she suffered horribly from seasickness) came to the U.S. and established missions in New York, New Orleans, Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles (soon to expand to Central and South America) but her best known work was in Chicago.

              Despite many setbacks and hardships, both financial and the result of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic attitudes of the native population, Mother Cabrini established schools, hospitals and orphanages in Chicago and all the other cities she served in. Cabrini, Columbus and Cuneo Hospitals (staffed by the nursing sisters of the M.S.C. congregation) existed until the late 20^th century. Mother Cabrini died in her motherhouse on the north side of Chicago in 1917. Mother Cabrini was canonized a saint in 1946, the first citizen of the U.S. to be so honored. Her shrine still stands on Chicago’s north side.