November 13 and 14 were two days of great celebration for our Institute. Many in fact were the celebrations and festivities in all provinces 84 years after Mother Cabrini’s Beatification and on the occasion of the 142nd anniversary of the Institute’s founding. At the National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in Chicago there was a grand celebration for Mother Cabrini’s feasts including the closing of the 75th anniversary Jubilee of the Canonization of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini. Also for the November 14 Foundation Feast there were several Eucharistic celebrations at Cabrini University in Pennsylvania and St. Frances Cabrini Shrine in New York. On Saturday, Nov. 12 in preparation for these beautiful anniversaries for MSCs, some travelers from Cabrini University in fact went to New York to visit and participate in the Mass at the Shrine. In Italy in Codogno, a Mass was celebrated with the presence of the Superior General, Sister Eliane and the General Council also to celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the arrival of the relic in Codogno. Celebrations of thanksgiving and feast also took place in the parish of St. Frances Cabrini in Lodi. Even in schools there were celebrations for these two important anniversaries: from the Cabrini Institute in Via Anagni in Rome to the Cabrini School in Rosario, Argentina, and the Colegio Madre Cabrini in São Paulo, Brazil, which anticipated the ceremony to Friday, November 11. Very colorful celebrations with costumes, dances and dances characterized the celebrations in Paraguay but also in Dubbo in Ethiopia where there was a party with staff members of Cabrini Ministries Ethiopia, sisters and invited guests until reaching Dzaipi in Uganda where a group of eleven girls prepared a song and performed a dance in honor of our Foundress.
Guadalupe Province
Cabrini Mission Foundation
In other languages: https://www.cabriniworld.org/?p=9941
From St. Frances Cabrini Shrine
| “Jesus, warm my heart with the fire of your holy love so that I will never fall into tepidity, but will always performers action in your service with great fervor.”~ St. Frances Xavier Cabrini November 13 Feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini One of the treasures Mother Cabrini left behind, perhaps inadvertently, was her journal of retreat notes. These deeply personal prayers and reflections provide us with insight into her soul and spirituality. Today, on her Feast Day, we offer you this excerpt from her retreat notes in 1890. Let us pray these words ourselves, that we may grow more like her, and thus closer to Jesus. “Speak Lord — your servant is listening” (1 Sam 3:10) Move my heart, enlighten my mind with a ray of your light, and make me understand well what you want of me. I am ready for anything, even to give my life, so that I can achieve the perfection which you require from me. I do not trust myself because, unfortunately, I know my misery and weakness, but leaning on you, enclosed in your heart, I hope to do everything. “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” (Ph. 4:13) St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us. In Jesus, Julia Attaway Executive Director |
Nelle altre lingue: https://www.cabriniworld.org/?p=9953
Video of the celebrations from the Shrine’s Facebook page: https://fb.watch/gP2rxiQU12/
Cabrinian Organizations Continue the Mission of the Patron Saint of Immigrants
November 11, 2022
On Nov. 13, 2022, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, and the end of her jubilee year in honor of the 75th anniversary of her canonization.
Born in 1850, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was an Italian Missionary Sister of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1880 she was sent by Pope Leo XIII to New York City to help minister to the Italian immigrants in the United States. When she arrived in the city after a long voyage, she was told by the archbishop she was no longer needed and invited to return to Italy. Determined to fulfil her mission, she is known to have said, in her broken English, “In America, I stay.”
Mother Cabrini went on to found 67 charitable institutions in just 35 years, serving the Italian immigrant community as well as the sick, impoverished and undereducated of New York City. She became a citizen of the United States and died in Chicago in 1917. In 1946 she was canonized as the first American citizen saint.
Two of CLINIC’s affiliate organizations bear the name of Mother Cabrini: the St. Frances Cabrini Center for Immigrant Legal Assistance, which is part of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Texas, and Cabrini Immigrant Services in New York City.
Both organizations consider themselves to be directly carrying on the work Mother Cabrini started.
“It’s the exact same mission, just different populations being served,” said Maria Mitchell, a managing attorney at the St. Frances Cabrini Center in Houston. “Mother Cabrini had a specific group that she was seeking to help – Italian immigrants – but she was always adapting to the needs in front of her. We do, too; we’re always responding to the latest needs of our immigrant clients.”
The St. Frances Cabrini Center has a staff of nearly 100 and serves thousands of immigrant clients per year. Their services range widely, from helping newly arrived Afghan refugees to representing unaccompanied minors and their families.
“For us, [carrying out the mission of Mother Cabrini] is not just about the work we do, but about who our staff are,” said Terry Cody, Legal Director. “Everyone is here for the mission. Many of our staff are immigrants themselves. Like Mother Cabrini, some of us are immigrants serving immigrants.”
“One attorney in our office is the child of another employee here who came to this country as a refugee,” Mitchell continued. “Now he is an attorney working with unaccompanied children. I think that is such a beautiful witness to the work that we do and the spirit of Mother Cabrini.”
“I love to reflect on Mother Cabrini’s words, ‘In America, I stay,’” Mitchell said. “It reminds me of the determination of our clients to make a life here in this country.”
Cabrini Immigrant Services of New York City, or CIS-NYC, remains close to the mission of Mother Cabrini even in its location: after a recent office move, it is now located right in the building of the Mother Cabrini shrine in the Washington Heights neighborhood.
Ella Nimmo, Director of Community Programs and Development, said that this location has allowed them an even closer relationship with the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, who founded CIS and several of whom still work at Cabrini Immigrant Services. Donations from pilgrims visiting the shrine sometimes go toward supporting CIS-NYC, and sometimes immigrants who are visiting the shrine will happen upon their office and request help. The Shrine staff often refer immigrants in need to visit CIS. CIS offers a wide variety of services for the immigrant community, from legal services to social support programs.
Beyond the outward connections to Mother Cabrini — its name, its founding by the Sisters, its location — Nimmo says CIS-NYC carries on the spirit of Mother Cabrini’s approach. “The Sisters often talk about Mother Cabrini having a sense of urgency about her, a ‘scrappy’ way of being,” Nimmo said. “If there was a need, Mother Cabrini was going to find a way to meet it. She would get things done. We try to take that approach as well.” Nimmo said CIS-NYC is always rising to the challenge of new developments facing immigrant communities in New York City. The biggest new challenge for them lately has been finding a way to meet the needs of the thousands of migrants who have been bused to the city from Texas.
“We have helped at least 120 families from the buses so far,” said Nimmo. “It’s difficult because they are arriving with nothing — no contacts, no cell phones even, few job prospects, and often no pathway to legal residency. We are having to be creative in how we help them and demonstrate support and solidarity.”
“The last few years have been really difficult, what with the pandemic and political changes,” Nimmo continued. “Now we have these migrant families arriving on buses from the border. Creating a supportive space for them amid these challenges is sometimes the most we can do. But we do all we can; we look for any source of support that we can provide, as we imagine that Mother Cabrini would have done.”
We invite you to explore the work of Cabrini Immigrant Services of NYC and the St. Frances Cabrini Center.
In other languages: https://www.cabriniworld.org/?p=10033
Cabrini University, Pennsylvania, USA:
Saint Frances Cabrini Shrine, New York, USA:
Holy Spirit Region
In other languages: https://www.cabriniworld.org/?p=9958
St. Cabrini’s Feast in Dzaipi was wonderful! A group of 11 girls trained a music and dance about our Foundress and they performed beautifully, as you can check on the video. The Parish was full of people who enjoyed and clapped hands at the end of the performance. Thank God for this Woman who passed to us her charisma and it goes on spreading the Love of Christ throughout the world, by our missions, together with our dear lay people who God sent to help us!
In other languages: https://www.cabriniworld.org/?p=9920
#The feast day of st. Frances Xavier Cabrini and 142nd anniversary of the foundation of Missionary Sisters of Sacred Heart Jesus was colorfully celebrated with the staff members of Cabrini Ministries Ethiopia, Msc sisters and invited guests in Dubbo, Ethiopia. Happy Feast to all!
From Mater Gratiae Province
Diocesi di Lodi
A parish in celebration for St. Frances Cabrini with a visit from the bishop – from “Il Cittadino” of Lodi
Numerous boys and girls, young people and adults welcomed Lodi Bishop Maurizio Malvestiti who presided yesterday morning at Mass at the parish church of St. Francesca Cabrini in Lodi, concelebrating with parish priest Monsignor Franco Anelli and parish vicar Father Luca Corini.
Yesterday, in fact, there was a memorial of the beatification of the patron saint that took place on Nov. 13, 84 years ago. At the beginning of his homily, the bishop commented on the Gospel text proclaimed by Fr. Luca. “The Word of God,” the prelate explained, “teaches us about ultimate truths, with mysterious terms and even disturbing images. History, indeed, knows many shadows. The war in Ukraine would be enough to prove it. The day of the Lord will come but it will be one of salvation for those who have been “afraid” of his name. In the heart of the Mass, after announcing his death and proclaiming his resurrection, we declare ourselves waiting for his coming, which will be glorious. It will be universally recognized ‘love, which opens us to life without end.” Then the bishop presented the figure of the saint to the faithful. “Today it is the patron saint, St. Frances Cabrini,” Bishop Maurice then explained, “who preached the gospel to you: a strong mother, an intelligent educator, an overwhelming missionary because she was animated by the fear and love of God. November 13 commemorates her beatification (1938). Canonized in 1946, the first saint with American citizenship, she was born in St. Angelo in 1850 and returned to the Father in 1917 in Chicago. Her body rests in New York City. A foundress in Codogno of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she dreamed of China, like St. Francis Xavier, but the Pope pointed her in the ‘opposite direction. Missionaries with good fruits one is only in the Church. She is patroness of migrants: she entered, in fact, their dramatic and inhumane conditions with extraordinary ability and courage building houses, schools, hospitals. Christ had convinced her that only “where your treasure is, there your heart will be.” She was not concerned about the end of time.
She wanted to put an end to pain, on this word: “All things I can in Him who gives me strength.” The world had become small: no one held him back anymore. In the face of trials, fear was overcome by ‘love.'” Finally, a strong appeal to the young people of the parish: “Boys and girls of the Cabrini of Lodi: an entirely original call is open for you. The world is waiting for you. Christ goes before you. Do not be afraid. God is love.” Giacinto Bosoni.
In other languages:
Mother Cabrini’s feast recounted by the Lodi Citizen
Istituto Cabrini, Gordiani, Roma
Santa Francisca Cabrini Province
Colegio Madre Cabrini – Brazil
Photo Mission San Lorenzo, Paraguay
School Madre Cabrini Rosario
