FRANCESCA SAVERIO CABRINI, saint. — Born at S. Angelo Lodigiano on 15 July 1850, died in Chicago on 22 December 1917. After a youth devoted to study and exercises of piety, she obtained her teaching diploma at Lodi in 1868. Orphaned of her father in 1869 and of her mother in 1870, she remained alone, since her sister had gone to join her brother in Argentina.
She taught for two years at Vidardo, where her vocation matured. Not admitted among the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, nor subsequently among the Canossians of Crema, because of her state of health, in 1874 she became directress of the Casa della Provvidenza at Codogno, founded by Signora Tondini; but her vocation led her to the missionary life rather than that of a simple nun. Indeed, on 14 November 1880 she founded the Institute of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, adding the name Saverio to her own, in homage to the great missionary Saint. The constitutions were approved on 12 August 1881. In 1887 she opened the first house in Rome and, on the advice of Leone XIII, devoted herself to the grand work of assisting Italian emigrants in America, confirmed in this purpose by a providential meeting with Mons. G. B. Scalabrini, bishop of Piacenza. In 1889 she departed for the United States with seven nuns, where, amid opposition and adversities of every kind, she began the many beautiful works that now flourish there in abundance: schools of every kind, hospitals, and orphanages. Her activity was tireless, and no fewer than thirteen times, despite her precarious state of health, she crossed the ocean, also visiting Central and South America and founding several houses there. The Italians overseas found in her a vigorous protector and a source of immense help; she is therefore rightly called the Saint of Emigrants, and today a broad movement is working to have her so declared.
(from G. De Luca, Parole sparte della S. C., Roma 1938, lav. f. l.)
FRANCESCA SAVERIO CABRINI, saint — Birthplace.
S. Angelo Lodigiano.
