Letter on the Feast Day of Saint Frances Cabrini

Today we celebrate the feast day of Mother Frances Cabrini, the patron of immigrants.
Mother Cabrini was born in Milan, Italy in 1850, the youngest of thirteen children. In 1880, with seven young women, Frances founded the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Leo XIII told Frances to go “not to the East, but to the West” to New York rather than to China as she had expected. She was to help the thousands of Italian immigrants already in the United States. Cabrini organized catechism and education classes for the Italian immigrants and provided for the needs of the many orphans. She established schools and orphanages despite tremendous odds.

Soon, requests for her to open schools came to Frances Cabrini from all over the world. She traveled to Europe, Central and South America and throughout the United States. She made twenty-three trans-Atlantic crossings and established sixty-seven institutions: schools, hospitals, and orphanages.

Her activity was relentless until her death. She died in Chicago on December 22, 1917. In 1946, she was canonized a saint by Pope Pius XII in recognition of her holiness and service to humanity and was named Patroness of Immigrants in 1950.

As Catholics, like Mother Cabrini, we are called to welcome the stranger, as taught to us by Christ in the Gospel of Matthew: “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…For I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Mt. 25:35). This is a particularly important message for us to remember from our Savior, at a time in which immigration has become a touchstone issue in our country.

While Church teaching recognizes the right of a nation to enforce its laws and control its border, it also uplifts and defends the rights and dignity of the human person, including the migrant. They have become people who are often unjustly scapegoated for the social ills of our nation and dehumanized, often referred to as “criminals” or “illegals.”

Currently, immigrants face deportation, often without warning, and at times without due process protections. Tragically, their families are being separated, with the “bread winner” being deported and US-citizen children being left behind in this country without even being able to say goodbye to their parent. Children are left in the only country they know without a father or mother who can provide for them. This is happening in our diocese, and it is cruel and inhumane.

The Church supports immigration reform that provides legal status and a path to citizenship to those who have lived in the US for a certain amount of time, contributed to the nation, and otherwise have been law abiding.

In his World Day of Migrants and Refugees message, Pope Leo says that migrants are a “blessing” to their new communities and, because of their strong faith in God, can help strengthen our faith as a Church. As Saint Frances Cabrini did all those years ago, I ask you to open your arms and hearts—and offer your prayers—to those newcomers who are in great need at this moment, in the name of Christ the Lord.