Mother Cabrini
Maria Francesca Cabrini
Commonly known as Mother Cabrini, she is an Italian saint, later nationalized in the United States. He was born in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano (Lo) on 151 July 1850 into a modest family of farmers. -- Passionate about the missionary life since she was a child, instead she found herself, due to various circumstances, to begin her apostolic life in an orphans' home run by two women of scarce spirituality; there he made his religious profession, purifying and maturing in suffering his missionary ideal and interiorising in the spirituality of the Sacred Heart a profound experience of God and the values of the Gospel. Finally free from the responsibilities that bound her to that house, she founded the Institute of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Codogno (Lo) in 1880. Due to the historical circumstances and by the will of Pope Leo Xlii, her missionary dream oriented towards China, was moved to the United States and South America, where millions of Italians emigrated in search of work, hope and better living conditions.
Thus Mother Cabrini became the voice, the supporter, the guardian and the Mother of thousands and thousands of emigrants. For them he opened schools, orphanages, boarding schools, hospitals and social centres, helping to integrate our compatriots who emigrated into the new cultures. But his missionary ardor was not limited to emigrants, he founded schools in Central America, Brazil and Argentina, in many states of North America, in Europe. Everywhere he wanted to make known the love of Jesus, to make him loved with his works and ideas, with the example of his missionaries, prayer, solidarity, and the culture of life and hope. He took as a motto for his life and his mission the phrase of St. Paul: "I can do everything in him who comforts me". She died in Chicago on December 22, 1917, was Beatified in 1938, Canonized in 1946. In 1950 she was proclaimed by Pius Xli «Universal Patroness of emigrants».
