A soul united with Jesus can do anything...
Mother Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, or Mother Cabrini as she is popularly called, is the first American citizen to be canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. She was born July 15, 1850 in the Lombardy area of Italy and was the thirteenth child of a farmer and his wife. She was pious but sickly as a child, but at the age of 27, after being denied entrance to two different religious communities due to her “delicate health,” she founded an order of nuns known as the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

Pope Leo XIII gave Mother Cabrini the commission to take her sisters to the “new world” where many Italian immigrants were without the ministry of priests and sisters who were able to speak their language. She obliged him by taking her sisters first to New York and then as far as Central and South America . But it was in the United States that her sisters had the greatest impact, founding hospitals, schools, orphanages and convents in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver and Seattle.

It was in Seattle that Mother Cabrini became an American citizen and, during her visits there, she was a regular worshiper at St. James Cathedral. She died in Chicago in 1917, was canonized a saint in 1946 and has come to be known as the “Saint of the Immigrant”. During the 1994 renovation of St. James Cathedral, to honor her special relationship to the cathedral, some of her relics were placed in the stone floor beneath the great altar. Her feast day is November 13th.

In her role as foundress and religious instructor, Mother Cabrini realized that “to form a teacher meant not only enriching one soul, but enriching an undetermined number of souls.” She imparted a great trust and love for the Lord in all she met, and inevitably inspired others to do the same. In writing to her fellow nuns regarding her strength, she said, “My good daughters, how prayer enlivens everything! He who prays with faith has fervor, and fervor is the fire of prayer... Pray always with Jesus, always remembering that a soul united with Jesus can do anything.”

Each time we begin a new Cabrini Ministry training, we begin in the name of Mother Cabrini, with deep trust and love of our God. The journey seeks both to provide us with skills to communicate our great compassion for those we meet and to enrich our self awareness and our souls, which are intricately connected to our lives as ministers and servants of the Lord.