This is the biography of a woman who lived her life with fierce intention and realized her dream through tenacity, passion, and love. The patron saint of emigrants everywhere—well known abroad but, curiously, little known in Italy—was first a frail Lombard schoolteacher of the nineteenth century. She faced countless hardships, both in the world and within the Church. Yet with extraordinary determination, she crossed the Atlantic twenty-eight times to bring her vision to life.
"A woman steeped in the most traditional faith and yet captivated by modernity, practicing humility and obedience while commanding vast resources for massive undertakings, relying on nothing but her own strength; sweet-natured and moved by boundless love for others, yet capable of being exacting and uncompromising with those who thwarted her mission—a mission she knew came from the Holy Spirit." So writes Lucetta Scaraffia. She tells Cabrini's story not as pious hagiography, but with compelling narrative power: the tale of a warrior among women, a saint of passionate conviction, and—why not—a visionary entrepreneur.
Francesca Cabrini's life was utterly unpredictable. Born in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano in 1850, she died in Chicago in 1917. When she first arrived in the United States in 1889, she came as just another poor emigrant with nothing. Over time, she built schools, orphanages, and hospitals—sixty-seven institutions across three continents by her death—to serve those forced by poverty and desperation to leave home in search of something better.
Her vision rested on a single principle: emigrants must take root in their new countries without abandoning their cultural and religious heritage. Cabrini understood clearly that "emigrants are among modernity's most destabilizing effects, creating masses of people without roots and without identity." Yet she worked—with remarkable success—to restore to them a sense of belonging, following a model that, a century later, still carries full force and relevance.
Scaraffia's book draws on archival documents from the Congregation itself and carries the reader along on Cabrini's journey. You witness both her triumphs and her struggles as she builds and sustains a vision always balanced between tradition and modernity, between conviction and the willingness to employ the tools and thinking of an evolving world. Throughout runs an unshakeable faith in a divine message of profound love and steadfast support.
Giulia Galeotti, 2004