I don’t know about you, but I grew up in a place with a lot of Italians.
In fact, not being Italian (or that other dominant ethnicity—Polish) meant that I felt like the immigrant to the upstate New York region my family moved to when I was 6. We possess not a drop of southern or eastern European blood, and we were definitely in the minority. We are also not very Irish and that made us even weirder.
Presumably, the ancestors of many of those we knew came in on the waves of Italian immigration that landed on the shores of New York City in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. These immigrants would, after an often-rocky process of assimilation, become part of the fabric of New York state, particularly in the City, where ⅓ of them chose to stay.
Now we have not just Italians, but Italian-Americans, creatures notably different from Italian-Italians. They make some of the best food on earth (see more on the New York Pizza Wars here), take great pride in their heritage, smile a lot, and bring a sparkle of the Old World to the New.
They seem like such a normal part of the society of New York City/state and that of so many regions of the United States now that it’s hard to imagine a time when the Italians were having a hard time of it in this country.
Fleeing poverty in their home country, particularly in the agricultural south of Italy where the opportunities for improvement were especially poor, millions of Italians struck out for a hopefully-brighter future in America during this period.
Arriving impoverished in the merciless streets of New York, unable to speak English, with probably few connections except other Italians who were literally and figuratively in the same boat, these desperate people often found themselves in worse conditions than the ones they left.
Work was hard to come by. Many of these immigrants had little education and were therefore unqualified for better-paying jobs. When they could get work, it was poorly recompensed and involved brutally long hours and horrid working conditions. With working parents, children were often deprived of the care, education, and supervision they needed.
Ghettos formed. Crime, vice, disease, and more poverty flourished. The Italians faced discrimination from other elements of society, which further encouraged segregation and cemented these problems.
And worst of all, their souls were in mortal danger. As evil in so many different forms tightened its grip on their communities, the Catholic faith they had brought with them was in danger of fading into a cultural memory.
Facing such poor prospects, how did the Italian population ever make it here?
Well, I don’t have all the historical answers, but I have an idea as to something—someone—who must have had something to do with it.
She stood 5 feet tall, suffered from poor health, and came from Italy herself. She also arrived in New York unable to speak English and without a place to live.
Her name was Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini and she would change the entire scene for the suffering Italians of America.
“Not to the East, but to the West…”
Francesca Cabrini had already overcome a slew of personal obstacles by the time she reached adulthood. She had been born two months premature and had survived a near-drowning accident that had left her with an incurable fear of water.
Francesca’s call to the religious life happened early in life, but her first attempts to join an order were rejected because of her chronic poor health.
Showing the spirit and determination that would characterize her life, she accepted God’s will at the time and became a teacher and then the administrator of an orphanage. She was a competent, devout, and skilled leader. She was eventually able to join the order who ran the orphanage and a few years later founded her own religious order—the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
They worked in Italy first, founding schools and orphanages. But it wasn’t long before Pope Leo XIII heard about the effective work of these sisters, and asked Mother Cabrini to accept a mission very close to his heart.
The Holy Father had heard about the terrible conditions facing the Italian immigrants to New York City. He had heard about the poverty, crime, and lack of education and healthcare. He had heard about the unjust working conditions, saying that the situation “had all the marks of a white slave trade.”
It was at this point that Pope Leo called for Mother Cabrini.
Now, Mother Cabrini had longed to be a missionary since childhood, as evidenced by the name of the order she founded. Her big dream was to work in the Far East—in China.
But Pope Leo saw a different path for her. After all, she was a gifted teacher, had a genuine care and love for those she served, and was filled with missionary zeal. She had serious business acumen and the know-how to run things like schools and hospitals on limited resources. She spoke Italian. She was courageous and spirited. She wouldn’t be afraid of stuff like rats and typhoid.
In a word, she was just what the Italians in New York needed.
Pope Leo asked Mother Cabrini to go “not to the East, but to the West,” to serve their countrymen so much in need.
Mother Cabrini had to adjust her dreams as she had done in the past when faced with a different calling than she expected. She embraced God’s will and set out for New York with six of her sisters.
The New York Days
The seven sisters were no different than the other Italian immigrants in that they got off to an unexpectedly rough start in New York. They were supposed to have a place to live and a stipend and they got neither on arrival.
But by now you probably know that Mother Cabrini was deterred by very little. She figured it out.
Her sisters lost no time in tending to the suffering, moving fearlessly through the streets and tenements of the impoverished Italians. They founded an orphanage, schools, and a hospital. I’ll leave it to other corners of the internet to tell you all the marvelous things they did (see a good bio here), but suffice it say that if the Italians needed it, the sisters provided it—education, child care, medical attention, catechesis, basic necessities, spiritual support, love, compassion, and acceptance.
Their work was so successful that it wasn’t long before calls came in from other cities and even other countries for the sisters to come assist their Italian immigrant populations. Chicago soon asked for her help, and she and her sisters obliged, performing the same tireless work in that city as they had done in New York.
The sisters’ work spread to Colorado, Washington state, California, and other parts of the country—even to Central and South America. You can find a fascinating map of Mother Cabrini’s travels in her bio referenced above.
Her impact was so great and so personal to so many places that no fewer than three places in America claim her as their own—New York, Chicago, and Colorado, each with their own shrines to her and their own stories of her wonderful work in their location.
Thank You, Mother Cabrini!
It’s hard to measure such things, but one does wonder how things would have turned out for the New York Italians—and the Chicago Italians, and the Colorado Italians, and all the rest—without Mother Cabrini and her hardworking missionary sisters.
How much more death and violence would there have been? How much more would the seeds of division, distrust, and segregation have taken root? How many Italians would have, perhaps, moved on to other parts of the country or given up and returned to Italy?
Where would the faith of the Italian-Americans be now, if not for the sisters who were dedicated to preserving it? I have to admit that the faith of the Italian-Americans I knew growing up was a factor in my own perseverance in the Faith, so I might ask—Mother Cabrini, where would my faith be without you?
Who knows. Only God knows the rippling impact of one diminutive, sickly but spirited Italian woman who, embracing God’s will at every moment of her life, went West instead of East.
Thank you, Mother Cabrini! +
