St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was an Italian-born missionary sister who served migrants across the Americas. Catholics seek her intercession for immigrants, missionaries, educators, health-care workers, and all who face displacement or loneliness.
Begin PrayingMore about St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
Francesca Cabrini was born in Lombardy in 1850 and founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880. She hoped to serve in Asia, but Pope Leo XIII directed her toward the West and the needs of Italian migrants. Arriving in New York in 1889, she found families facing poverty, prejudice, dangerous work, and little access to education or medical care. Her confidence in the Sacred Heart of Jesus sustained a demanding missionary life.
Mother Cabrini and her sisters established schools, orphanages, hospitals, and other works in the United States and in several countries of Europe and the Americas. She became a United States citizen in 1909 and died in Chicago in 1917. Canonized in 1946, she was the first United States citizen to be declared a saint and was named patroness of immigrants. This novena asks for her practical courage and her trust that no person far from home is outside the care of Christ.
