Mother Cabrini’s Legacy Between the Past and the Future
At the beginning of the year, one of the goals we set was to tell the story of hidden realities seldom talked about in the media. Communication is often a hidden ministry, made up of exchanges of emails, phone calls, videos, etc., and we have had to adapt to this in recent times. Our Cabrinian family, like every family in these two years of the pandemic, has suffered loneliness, distance and numerous silences. As Pope Francis says, “The family is the first place where we learn to communicate. Returning to this original moment can help us both to make communication more authentic and human, and to look at the family from a new point of view.” For this reason, we wished to reclaim the threads of a treasured past by returning to the same language, whose alphabet was written 171 years ago by Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini.
On July 15th, our communication team had the opportunity to participate in celebrations for Mother Cabrini’s birth in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano. On this occasion, the presence of our foundress and her legacy was tangibly felt, especially when all the people present embraced the statue of Mother Cabrini in Piazza XV Luglio.
Many children sang and waved their little flags with messages dedicated to Mother Cabrini, waiting for the white doves to fly into the sky, just as they did on July 15, 171 years ago, when little Francesca was born. The entire Cabrini world from Buenos Aires to Melbourne gave a single embrace to Mother Cabrini as her birth was remembered, and she was celebrated as the celestial Patroness of All Immigrants. It was a single language, shared by the whole world.
In September, we launched a new challenge, reinventing a type of communication projected into the future. Ten people involved in communication, from the different Provinces and Region, met for the first time on Zoom. The participants had the opportunity to introduce themselves, talk about their work and share ideas and dreams about the future of communication for the Institute. It was exciting to see each other’s faces, and to feel that, even though we are on opposite sides of the planet, we are all on the same wavelength: sharing the mission telling of the love of Jesus and the Charism of Mother Cabrini to the ends of the earth.
This meeting also allowed us to renew our thanks to all the Sisters and lay collaborators who, behind the scenes, continue to work with care to enhance this continuous, global dialogue. We all feel connected and in relationship as one big family. As Anthony Robbins says, “To communicate effectively, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world, and use this understanding as a guide for our communication with others.”
In order for Mother Cabrini’s message to become tangible, alive and embodied among us, we shared how important it is to join forces in sharing our ideas and labors. We wish to continue to transmit this legacy with the means at our disposal, so that our Cabrini World communication may be a bridge between the past, the present, and future generations.
There is a common thread linking these two events experienced by the communication team in recent months: to promote the legacy of Mother Cabrini and the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in order to continue to dream and inflame hearts with love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus in today’s world.
Tatiana Paradiso and Giulia Angelucci
On behalf of the Generalate Communications Portfolio