St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was born Maria Francesca Cabrini on 15 July 1850 at Sant'Angelo Lodigiano in Lombardy, Italy, the youngest of thirteen children. Frail from birth, she nonetheless founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880. Hoping to be sent to China, she was instead directed by Pope Leo XIII to go "not to the East, but to the West," to serve the flood of Italian immigrants in the United States.

Arriving in New York in 1889, Mother Cabrini spent the rest of her life founding schools, orphanages, and hospitals across the Americas and Europe, establishing some sixty-seven institutions despite chronic ill health and frequent opposition. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1909. She died in Chicago on 22 December 1917. Canonized in 1946, she was the first United States citizen to be declared a saint and is honored as the patroness of immigrants.