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 MEMORIAL
OF ST. FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI
The
dioceses in the United States celebrate the memorial of St. Frances
Xavier Cabrini, the virgin, on November 13.
This Italian-born saint was the first United States citizen to be
canonized. St. Frances' missionary spirit was awakened in her as
a little girl when her father read stories of the missions to his
children. She helped the pastor teach catechism and visited the
sick and the poor. She also taught school in a nearby town, and
for six years supervised an orphanage assisted by a group of young
women.
St.
Frances came to America in as a missionary and founded the Missionary
Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools
and hospitals. The orphanage she established set out a lifework
that comprised the alleviation of every human need. St. Frances
also erected erected schools, kindergartens, clinics, orphanages,
and foundling homes for the children. Shew even constructed a numbers
of hospitals for the needy sick.
Frail
and diminutive as she is, St. Frances showed such energy and enterprise
that everyone marveled. She crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times
to visit the various houses and institutions. In 1909 she adopted
the United States as her country and became a citizen. After thirty-seven
years of unflagging labor and heroic charity she died alone in a
chair in Columbus Hospital at Chicago, Illinois, while making dolls
for orphans in a preparation for a Christmas party. At her death
over five thousand children were receiving care in her charitable
institutions, and at the same time her community had grown to five
hundred members in seventy houses in North and South America, France,
Spain, and England. Saint Frances is the patron saint of hospital
administrators; immigrants and orphans.
To
know more about Saint Frances Xavier Cabrni, kindly click on the
following links:
•
Mother Cabribi Shrine
• Little Rosary
Of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
• Sacra Virginitas
• Address
on World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2002
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“Jesus’
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