Mother Cabrini

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Also known as
Francesca Saverio Cabrini
Mother Cabrini

Memorial

13 November. On November 13th Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence……..that request came from his wife. Deep down he knew she was right but he also knew that some day he would return to her. With nowhere else to go he appeared at the home of his [childhood] friend Oscar Madison. Sometime earlier Madison’s wife had thrown him out requesting that he never return. Can 2 divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy? Sorry force of habit……anyhoo: before 1970 it was celebrated 22 December

Profile
Our Saint today was one of thirteen children who was sent to Catholic School for her education eventually becoming a teacher in her home town in Italy.

As was the case with a lot of these youth with a calling, when she tried to enter the convent at age 18, poor health prevented her taking the veil. A priest asked her to teach at an orphanage school for girl‘s in Cadagono, Italy, which she did for six years.

Eventually her health improved enough that she was able to join the religious order running the school in 1877, and was such a natural leader doing so well herself at her work, when the orphanage closed in 1880, her bishop asked her to found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. Pope Leo XIII then sent her to the United States to carry on this mission.

She and six Sisters arrived in New York in 1889. They worked among immigrants, especially Italians. Mother Cabrini founded 67 institutions, including schools, hospitals, and orphanages in the United States, Europe and South America. She was a very forceful, some say difficult person to deal with. She had arguments with her superiors and even the Pope quite often; these “discussions” were said to be legendary at times.

Like many of the people she worked with, Mother became a United States citizen. Although they try to soften her image in the holy cards she comes across to me as a stern woman, sometimes sporting a nice moustache, not unlike my wizened grandmother “Mary Goodwill”. She makes the holy card images of Louise de Merrilac look good…..She was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. She died in the USA, Chicago, of malaria in 1917. Her miracles included restoring sight to a child iatrogenically blinded by silver nitrate, and healing of a terminally ill nun.

Her shrine is uptown in Manhattan, 701 Fort Washington Avenue, The A train stops almost across the street from it. Her, sadly not incorrupt body, is on display, daily in a glass altar in the church there. The head of her remains looks like a wax fake…it is, the real head was sent to Rome as a relic there. After a nice walk through Fort Tryon Park and a visit to the Cloisters you may want to stop in and see her body on display, rotting away. The gift shop for the shrine is full of nice Catholic voodoo stuff like sanitaria statues, and holy oils and holywaters, and the like so fondly favored by the neighborhood locals The sign said “Holy Water for Sale / Agua Bendita para venta”; as you know selling a blessed item is the sin of simony. Being the wiseacre that I am, I pointed out to the lady in there that she can’t sell holy water, she must be selling the container not the water, right? She didn’t care one way or the other…. She said “$7.50… do you want it or not?” (Actually it was “Siete cinquenta.. quieres eso, si o no?”)


Patronage
against malaria
against blindness
hospital administrators
immigrants
orphans
invoked by commuters to have a bus or train come quickly while waiting. Try this if you are waiting for the A train to her shrine:

“Mother Cabrini
send a machini.”