St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
A saint who walked the streets of Chicago
By Father Louis J. Cameli, STD
In December of 1917, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini died at Columbus Hospital in Chicago. The room where she died has been preserved and now belongs to the national shrine dedicated to her located at 2520 N. Lakeview Ave. It is very much worth a visit.
The 2024 film “Cabrini” accurately describes her arrival in New York in 1889 to care for impoverished Italian immigrants. She and her fellow sisters faced stunning challenges that included blatant prejudice against the immigrants and even the reluctance of Church officials to accept her service and support her efforts. Mother Cabrini, however, had the heart of a committed missionary. She persevered tirelessly and drew strength from Saint Paul’s words that became her motto: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)
The film “Cabrini,” although set more than 136 years ago, has a very timely quality. Then as now, we are grappling with the phenomenon of immigration or, more precisely, with our response to persons who are immigrants. Then as now, in the Church, we struggle to find ways to support the mission and ministry of women. Then as now, we search for practical pathways to serve those whom Pope Francis has called “people on the margins.”
Saints have this effect on us. Even though they lived in their particular social, cultural, and historical circumstances, they challenge us today to carry the Gospel forward through our lives. In a particular way, Mother Cabrini’s life presses us to bring our faith to bear on the world in real and practical ways. She would see a need and move to respond directly to it. For example, there were orphans in New York, and so she built an orphanage. There were children to be educated and catechized, and so she established schools. There were sick people without ready access to health care, and so she built hospitals, two of them in Chicago.
For Mother Cabrini, faith was not simply about what we believe, although she was certainly firm in her convictions. Faith also meant an undying and trusting reliance on God. Finally, faith meant the works of love in caring for our brothers and sisters that found practical expression in the institutions she founded.
Recently, I spoke with one of our priests in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Father Michael Zaniolo, the chaplain at O’Hare and Midway airports, and recognized that we have real connections with this holy woman. When Father Zaniolo was a young priest in the early 1990s and serving as associate pastor at Saint William’s Parish, he would bring Holy Communion to Carmelinda Nuti, who was 103 years old and cared for by her 88-year-old son, John. In 1909, when Carmelinda was 20 years old, she came from Italy to Chicago and founded Nuti Bakery on the city’s West Side with her husband.
Carmelinda described how Mother Cabrini would regularly come to the bakery to retrieve empty burlap
flour sacks to recycle them as bed linens for her hospitals. This story amazes me. Certainly, it amazes me that there is a living memory of and link to Mother Cabrini carried forward by Carmelinda Nuti through Father Zaniolo. Even more amazing, in my estimation, is Mother Cabrini’s practical detail in living out the Christian virtue of charity—burlap flour sacks! It gives me pause. It makes me question myself: How do I embrace the call to love God and my neighbor and move it beyond an abstract conviction? How do I translate it into practical action?
This saint who walked the streets of Chicago was close to us and remains so even today. We can admire her, of course, but we also recognize that she makes us take another look at our lives and commitments to God and each other. That is the blessing and the grace of the saints that God has given to us in the Church.
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