November 13 Celebration of Saints

November 13 Celebration of Saints

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Frances Xavier Cabrini, M.S.C., “Mother Cabrini,” was born Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850 in Sant’Angelo, Austrian Empire. She was born two months early, and remained frail and with delicate health through her lifetime.

Frances was educated at a school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart and graduated at age 18 with a certificate in education.

Her parents died in 1870, when she was 20. That same year, she applied to the order of Daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno, but they told her she was too frail to enter the order. So, she took a position of headmistress at an orphanage, joined by other women who admired her religious way of life.

Seven years later, in 1877, Frances took her religious vows and added the religious name Xavier to her name, in honor of Saint Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionaries. 

Three years later, Frances and six of her sisters founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (M.S.C.). She asked Pope Pius IX in 1877 for permission to take missionaries to China. He recommended instead that she establish missions in American to help the throngs of impoverished Italian immigrants that were arriving there.

She arrived in New York on the last day of March, 1899 with six of her sisters. She initially founded an orphanage that still exists today in West Park, New York as the Saint Cabrini Home.

Frances and her sisters provided for the needs of orphans while providing education and catechism to the many Italian immigrants in New York.

She also founded two hospitals in New York and one in Chicago. In all, Mother Frances Cabrini established 67 institutions in the United States, South America and Europe.

Frances became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1909.

Frances Xavier Cabrini died on December 22, 1917 in Chicago, Illinois at the age of 67. She was beatified on November 13, 1938 by Pope Pius XI and canonized a saint by Pope Pius XII on July 7, 1946. She was the first naturalized citizen of the United States to become a saint, and is the patron saint of immigrants and hospital administrators.

Read more about Mother Cabrini. 

Other Saints for Today

Other saints for this day include:

Saint Abbo, Saint Arcadius and Companions, Blessed Vincent Bossilkov, Saint Brice, Saint Caillin, Saint Chillien, Saint Dalmatius of Rodez, Saint Devinicus, Saint Didacus, Saint Gredifael, Saint Homobonus, Saint Maxellendis, Saint Mitrius and Saint Quintian.