What Sister Cabrini Can Teach Us

Sister Frances Xavier Cabrini

By N. Peter Antone

Until I watched the movie “Sister Cabrini,” I never thought a story could capture the issues of humanity and immigration so well as to rank among the best movies I have watched in my lifetime.

The movie is the true story of a girl, Cabrini, living in the 19th century with poor health, envisioning missionary work to open orphanages, hospitals, and accommodations for the poor world-wide, long before anyone thought of social services.

Cabrini was so frail in her youth that her first application to be a nun was denied as being too weak to withstand the pressure of a nun’s life. Eventually, after she convinced the order to accept her, she founded an orphanage in Italy that was so successful it attracted the attention of the Pope at the time. From there, she repeatedly applied for permission to start a missionary in China but was denied.

Sr. Cabrini finally insisted on seeing Pope Leo XIII and convinced him, against the advice of his cardinals, to allow her to start missionary work outside Italy. However, he asked her to do so in the U.S., where new Italian immigrants were suffering. Upon her arrival to New York, she encountered an immigrant community consumed by disease, poverty, crime, and discrimination by the public.

Despite incredible odds against her, Sr. Cabrini was able to open orphanages, hospitals, and accommodation centers for poor immigrants not only in New York, but throughout the entire United States. After her death, her mission was expanded worldwide until it reached China. She was canonized, making her the first American saint (the Patron Saint of Immigrants).

At its core, Sr. Cabrini is a story of determination to do good against all odds and succeed beyond any imagination. But it is also a story of immigrants, not too different from our Chaldean immigration story. Ultimately, it is a story of the potential good in mankind as reflected in our American experience.

The movie brings to life the suffering of new Italian immigrants in the last nineteenth century, not unlike the suffering of new Chaldeans who immigrated here in early twentieth century. Like the first Italian immigrants, the first Chaldean refugees lacked U.S. education, language, and connection to the networks of power. However, Chaldeans—through hard work, family love, persistence, and unwavering ambition—were able to establish small businesses. Now, their second-generation floods U.S. universities and occupies many professions in the business world with ever-expanding success.

The Sister Cabrini story is also a testament to the many benefits of accepting immigrants, from humanitarian gestures to economic benefits, cultural enrichment and economic vitality, as evidenced by the huge contributions made to our American society by Italian immigrants who were shunned by locals when they first arrived.

Her story is also one of compassion, inclusion and acceptance. It inspires immigrants and native-born Americans to work together towards creating a more inclusive and peaceful society of people from all backgrounds. America is a story of melting pot, where diverse cultures accept, integrate, and interconnect with people from different backgrounds.

I often wonder how communities that arrive poor and hopeless to the U.S. can thrive within a generation, while many of those left in the old country are still embroiled in the same stagnant cycle of life their ancestors experienced many years ago. What is it in the U.S. that motivates people to create genius from the ashes of a history of impoverishment?

The world ought to be inspired by the U.S. experience. Here, communities of different cultures, backgrounds, languages, and experiences live and prosper in peace. I believe that the American experiment can be a universal reflection of the goodness in the human soul enabling different people to co-exist in peace together.

While Sister Cabrini’s story is that of a courageous nun helping others, her bigger story is an example to the world of how we can all enrich our small planet with love to each other regardless of who our neighbor is or where they came from.