Story Highlights
- Historical event:
- 7 July 1946
- Saint Frances Cabrini was declared a saint of the Catholic Church by Pope Venerable Pius XII on this day in 1946. She is the patron saint of immigrants.
On this day in 1946, a citizen of the United States was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church for the first time in history. It was Saint Frances Cabrini, founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
Although she was born in Italy, she moved to the United States in 1889. She founded an orphanage in the state of New York that still exists today and is known as Saint Cabrini Home. It was the first of as many as 67 institutions that Frances founded in the United States and other parts of the world (she had a great missionary spirit).
It is interesting to note that Saint Frances involved several thousand nuns in missionary activities before she died.
Those in the United States, but also in other parts of the world, helped people in many ways. They cared for the poor, the sick and orphans, and even supposedly consoled the prisoners on death row in the famous Sing-Sing prison.
Saint Frances Cabrini was declared a saint of the Catholic Church by Pope Venerable
Pius XII on this day in 1946. As she was naturalized citizen of the United States since 1909, this proclamation made her the first person canonized among American citizens in general (both female, and male).
It is interesting that Saint Frances Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants. A shrine was built on Manhattan in New York and a street was renamed Cabrini Boulevard in her honor. Another shrine in her honor was constructed in the U.S. state of Colorado.
A number of important institutions in the United States are named after Saint Frances Cabrini. For example, there exists the Mother Cabrini High School in New York and Cabrini College in Pennsylvania. It is interesting that Saint Frances Cabrini expressed a desire for missionary work in China.
