From the papal throne in the blazing baroque magnificence of St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Pius pronounced the ancient formula: "In the most holy name of the Trinity ... for the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian religion. . . ." Then, with the solemn notes of the Te Deum, and the pomp of a papal High Mass, and the clamor of Roman church bells, Francesca Saverio Cabrini became the first U.S. saint.
Until the 12th Century saints were created quickly and easily by popular acclaim or by decree of local bishops. But by the decrees of Pope Urban VIII in 1625 and 1634, the process of canonization began to be tightened. Today the barriers to sainthood, both ecclesiastical and financial, are formidable. So expensive is the long church inquiry that Catholic Biographer Theodore Maynard says: ". . . It might seem that nobody (however holy) has much chance of being canonized today who does not belong to a religious order prepared to pay the costs, unless he can arouse such popular enthusiasm as to have his devotees subscribe the necessary funds."
Ordinarily, no step toward sainthood can be taken until the "Servant of God" in question has been dead at least 50 years. In Francesca Cabrini's case this requirement was waived by direct action of Pope Pius XI; her process started ten years after her death in 1917, giving her one of the quickest canonizations of modern times. (Three others were proclaimed saints at the Vatican ceremonies last week: Jeanne-Elizabeth Bichier des Ages, a French nun who died in 1838; Bernardino Realini, an Italian Jesuit, who died in 1616; John de Britto, Portuguese missionary martyred in India in 1693.)
Good Works. On March 31, 1889, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, a tiny, frail nun, daughter of a Lombard farmer, arrived in New York with six' members of the order she had formed, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Leo XIII had sent her to work among the Italian immigrants who were finding neither a welcome nor prosperity in the New World, and worse, in the eyes of the Church, were losing their faith and piety.
Mother Cabrini and her six set to work in the New York slums. To support their first orphanage they begged their way through the squalor of Little Italy, later managed to set up a tiny, ill-equipped hospital for the Italian poor. Though funds came mostly in small change, Mother Cabrini's masterful will again & again overcame obstacles that seemed insuperable. For the next 28 years she traveled indefatigably, setting up schools, hospitals, orphanages and novitiates in Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver and other U.S. cities.
Her shrewdness in acquiring property for these institutions and raising funds to pay for it made her seem to many a sharp businessman a kind of saintly Hetty Green. And she was as tough as she was canny.
When a group of highbinding Chicago contractors tried to get the better of the sisters in remodeling a hotel into a hospital, the little Italian nun fired them out of hand, tucked up her habit, and stumped about the scaffoldings for weeks directing the laborers herself. She was an American after America's heart, and in 1909, in her 59th year, she became a U.S. citizen.