St. Frances Xavier Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a religious institute that was a major support to her fellow Italian immigrants to the United States. She was the first U.S. citizen to be canonized a saint by the Catholic Church, on July 7, 1946.
She was born Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850. She was the youngest of thirteen children. Only four of the thirteen survived beyond adolescence. Born two months early, she was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health throughout her life. Francesca attended a school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Five years later she graduated cum laude, with a teaching certificate.
After her parents died in 1870, she applied for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno. These sisters were her former teachers, but reluctantly, they told her she was too frail for their life. She became the headmistress of the House of Providence orphanage in Codogno, where she taught and drew a small community of women to live a religious way of life. Cabrini took religious vows in 1877 and added Xavier to her name to honor the Jesuit saint, Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionary service. She had planned, like Francis Xavier, to be a missionary in the Far East.
Founding of The Missionary Sisters of The Sacred Heart of Jesus
In November 1880, Cabrini and seven other women who had taken religious vows with her founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC). She wrote the Rule and Constitutions of the religious institute, and she continued as its superior general until her death. The sisters took in orphans and foundlings, opened a day school to help pay expenses, started classes in needlework and sold their fine embroidery to earn a little more money. The institute established seven homes and a free school and nursery in its first five years. Its good works brought Cabrini to the attention of Giovanni Scalabrini, Bishop of Piacenza, and of Pope Leo XIII.
Mission To The United States
In September 1887, Cabrini went to seek the pope's approval to establish missions in China. Instead, he urged that she go to the United States to help the Italian immigrants who were flooding to that nation, mostly in great poverty.
Not to the East, but to the West.
She founded 67 missionary institutions to serve the sick and poor, long before government agencies provided extensive social services – in New York; Chicago and Des Plaines, Illinois; Seattle; New Orleans; Denver and Golden, Colorado; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; and in countries throughout Latin America and Europe. In 1926, nine years after her death, the Missionary Sisters achieved Cabrini's original goal of becoming missionaries to China.
