St. Frances Xavier Cabrini: Feast Day, Patronage & Prayers
Feast day: November 13 (Memorial in the United States; not on the General Roman Calendar)
Patron of: Immigrants.
About St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was born in 1850 in Lombardy, Italy, the youngest of thirteen children, born prematurely and frail all her life. She trained as a teacher and was refused by two religious orders because of her health. In 1880 she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, hoping to go as a missionary to China.
Pope Leo XIII instead sent her west, to serve the Italian immigrants pouring into the Americas. She arrived in New York in 1889 and found that the orphanage planned for her had fallen through, but she refused to go home. Despite a lifelong fear of water, she crossed the ocean some two dozen times, and she founded schools, orphanages, and hospitals across the United States and in Latin America and Europe, about sixty-seven institutions in all. She became a U.S. citizen in 1909. Her favorite words were St. Paul's: "I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me." She died in Chicago in 1917, and in 1946 she became the first citizen of the United States to be canonized. Pius XII named her patroness of immigrants in 1950.
Prayers to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini on Daily Catholic Prayers
Browse every saint in our Catalog of Saints A–Z.
Comments