Frances Cabrini was born and baptized on 15 July 1850 in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano in northern Italy, to a family rich in faith and piety. Early in life she began her journey as a disciple of the Lord, who led her to the heights of sanctity in mysterious and unforeseen ways. 

The turning-point in her life was entering the "House of Providence" in Codogno, where tribulations and difficulties strengthened her missionary fervour and her resolve to dedicate herself totally to the Lord. She received the religious habit, and while keeping the name Frances, later added Xavier to it in memory of the great Jesuit missionary and patron of the missions. Thanks to the encouragement and support of Bishop Domenico Maria Gelmini of Lodi, Sr Frances Xavier left the "House of Providence" with seven companions to found your institute in an old Franciscan monastery. First called the "Salesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart", they received diocesan approval in 1881.

Pope Leo XIII asked her to care for poor Italian immigrants Mother Cabrini asked her sisters for evangelical obedience, mortification, renunciation, vigilance of the heart and interior silence as necessary virtues for conforming their lives to Christ and for fostering and living their missionary desires. Vocations surprisingly blossomed and the institute rapidly expanded in Lombardy and beyond the region, with the opening of the first house in Rome and papal approval of the "Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus" on 12 March 1888, scarcely eight years after their foundation. 

The famous words of Pope Leo XIII to your foundress, "Not to the East, but to the West", are well known. She longed to go to China, but his words gave new energy and direction to her missionary zeal. The invitation of the Vicar of Christ directed her towards the masses of immigrants who, at the end of the 1800s, were crossing the ocean in large numbers to the United States of America, often in conditions of extreme poverty. 

From that moment on, Mother Cabrini's tireless apostolic work was more and more inspired by her desire to bring salvation to all, and in a hurry. She used to say: "The Heart of Jesus does things in such a hurry that I can barely keep up with Him". With a group of sisters she left for New York on the first of many voyages in which, as a messenger of hope, she would achieve ever new goals in her tireless apostolate: Nicaragua, Brazil and Argentina, in addition to France, Spain and England. 

Armed with remarkable boldness, she started schools, hospitals and orphanages from nothing for the masses of the poor who ventured into the new world in search of work. Not knowing the language and lacking the wherewithal to find a respectable place in American society, they were often victims of the unscrupulous. Her motherly heart, which gave her no peace, reached out to them everywhere: in hovels, prisons and mines. Never intimidated by toil or distance, Mother Cabrini traveled from New York to New Jersey, from Pennsylvania to Illinois, from California to Louisiana and Colorado. Even today in the United States, where she is still familiarly called "Mother Cabrini", there is a surprisingly deep devotion to someone who, while loving her country of origin, wanted to take American citizenship. 

She was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1938, just 21 years after her death in Chicago on 22 December 1917, and was canonized in 1946 by Pope Pius XII. In the Holy Year of 1950, he proclaimed her patroness of immigrants: this little woman who, by defending the dignity of those forced to live far from their country, had became an indomitable peacemaker. 

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonized.

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