Movie shares Mother Cabrini’s legacy with world

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald

So much excitement abounds at Cabrini High School surrounding the March 8 movie premiere of “Cabrini,” detailing pioneer St. Frances Cabrini, who died in 1917 and was canonized a saint in 1946. She became a patron saint of immigrants in 1950.

For two years, the school has celebrated its deep connection to the Italian nun who opened an orphanage and school for immigrant Italian children in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1892. The orphanage moved to Bayou St. John, where Cabrini High School sits today, after Mother Cabrini bought the property in 1904 and built a school in 1906.

​​”She found this land, bought this land and lived and worked here,” Cabrini president and CEO Sheri Salvagio said. “The women of Cabrini High School are heirs to a rich inheritance, because of her incredible legacy. Every Italian in America owes a debt of gratitude to Frances Cabrini because she ministered to Italian immigrants when she came here.”

Two big events
Two important events have thus far celebrated the movie and life of St. Frances Cabrini. 

The first event was a reception March 26, 2022, at the American Italian Cultural Center and Museum in downtown New Orleans. Clips from the movie in production were shown to Cabrini benefactors, alumni, Cabrini Mission Foundation president and board chair Sister Pietrina Raccuglia of New York – a Missionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the order that Mother Cabrini founded – along with the film’s executive producer J. Eustace Wolfington of Philadelphia, a longtime devotee of Mother Cabrini, and others. 

A featured exhibit detailing Mother Cabrini’s many contributions was unveiled at the opening event. Cabrini High School had donated a life-size statue of Mother Cabrini for the exhibit, and three, first-class relics ­– her hairbrush, silk fan and handkerchief – were loaned by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – to the museum.

Fast forward two years to a reception and advanced movie screening March 7 with more than 300 people in attendance. Coincidentally, the relics were finally installed in the museum the same day as the movie’s premiere at AMC Clearview.

Frank Maselli, chairman of the American Italian Cultural Center and Museum, attended both events.  

“St. Mother Cabrini, being Italian, has a special place in all of our hearts,” Maselli  said. “This is exactly what I’ve been hoping would happen,” Maselli said about the $40 million movie coming to fruition. “I’ve been hoping for a long time that we could get some first-class, major motion pictures to tell good stories of the good people in this world – and Mother Cabrini is at the top of the list.”

Cabrini, an example for students, all women
A third event on March 19 will begin with a prayer service at 8:15 a.m. in the gym. Students then will travel by 10 buses to attend the movie. Cabrini sisters in New York are funding the excursion, Salvagio said. Nuns from religious communities that have impacted our community, much like Mother Cabrini did, are invited. Students will return to school for a celebratory lunch and movie reflection. 

Cabrini junior Amelia Ulmer attended the premiere. She knows St. Cabrini’s story of overcoming challenges – being born premature, contracting tuberculosis as a child and being rejected because of her illness by several religious orders before founding the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880. While desiring to be a missionary in the Far East, Pope Leo XIII thought she was needed more in the United States where people of Italian descent were persecuted. She came to America in 1889, and later visited New Orleans during a yellow fever outbreak and rampant discrimination of Italians. Mother Cabrini brought nuns here to house and educate Italian children who had lost parents to the outbreak. 

 “I think the movie will get her name out there to those who aren’t familiar with her and spread her mission of helping others, especially immigrants. … and I think it will inspire others to do the same,” Ulmer said.

Cabrini alumna Rosalie Denmark, who was taught by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at St. Mary’s Italian Elementary and Cabrini High, was among the first graduating class of Cabrini High School. She reveres the small-in-stature nun for helping the less fortunate. She had also attended the premiere at the museum.

“She was so sickly, but insisted on being a missionary,” Denmark said. She mentioned a miracle attributed to Mother Cabrini – a male baby’s eyesight (burned by eye drops) was restored after her order of nuns prayed over him. He later became a priest and talked to her class. 

Denmark said she thinks the movie will promote who Mother Cabrini is. 

“The goal is for people to know who she is, the wonderful person she is and the good she did,” Denmark said.

Her spirit remains
As a constant reminder that a saint walked on the school’s grounds, Cabrini High School dedicated a museum in her honor and preserved a bedroom where Mother Cabrini once slept. The shrine, museum and Sacred Heart chapel are open to the public for tours and have gained popularity since buzz about the movie started, Salvagio said. 

The quote said by St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, “Today, love must not be hidden … It must be living, active and true,” exemplifies the saint’s spirit. Salvagio said the movie reinforced to her how the Holy Spirit guided the saint’s mission.

“I think her fortitude to overcome adversity is a gift of the Holy Spirit,” Salvagio said. “She was filled with the Holy Spirit, and it gave her the courage to overcome tremendous adversity to persevere, to never lose hope and to continue the call that God had on her life. She never gave up. That’s the message I think the young women will get from her.”

“You can feel Mother Cabrini is still here,” said Janice Dean, Cabrini class of 1970, who attended the screening. “Seeing this very frail, little woman standing up to priests and politicians – it makes me feel, to this day, that women can do anything they want.”

Campus field trips with guided tours of Mother Cabrini’s bedroom, museum and chapel are available by calling (504) 483-8665 or emailing [email protected]. 

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