Francesca (Frances) Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonized a saint. She is the patron of immigrants. Born in northern Italy in 1850,  she was orphaned by the age of 18 and decided to join the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

Frances longed to be a missionary in China but she soon realized that Italian immigrants in the U.S. needed much assistance. She and six other Sacred Heart sisters came to the U.S. in 1889, under the patronage of Archbishop Corrigan of New York.

At the advice of Pope Leo XIII who told her, “Not to the East, but to the West” Mother Cabrini focused her missionary efforts on the United States.

Though she had a deathly fear of water and drowning she crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than 30 times in service of the Church and the people she was serving. She traveled throughout the country, setting up four hospitals and another 50 orphanages, convents and schools.

One of the alleged miracles attributed to her occurred in Denver, where a parcel of land was donated to her order so that the children in her orphanages would have a site for their summer camp. However, there was no water at the site, and the land was thought to be useless. St. Frances visited the site and, using her cane, she struck a rock which began to gush forth pure spring water.

Mother Cabrini eventually became a naturalized U.S. citizen and died in Colorado in 1917. She was canonized in 1946, just as a new immigrant wave began in the United States, following the Second World War.

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