Allow me to, now add, further words on the new inspiring movie, Cabrini, and one that shows an inspiration for all women, young or old.  When I was first composing this written piece, I came upon these candid words by a young man who reviewed the movie, without giving away and spoiling the feature.  I liked the way he expressed himself.  He is on Youtube via Just Bible, very smart guy.  

        Guess what?  He is not even Catholic. SO, you check this out on your own.  According to his and my knowledge—of what I believe this movie can become—only you can say it if it will be something special that it will be a movie to watch, of whatever age you are, even teenagers, or just a bunch of BS.  The clip is only about 6 minutes.

        The movie is directed by Alejandro Monteverde, director of Sound of Freedom another feature film which earned nearly $250 million in 2023, the story of sex-trafficking.  

        This movie, incidentally, broke into the top 10 American films in the U.S. box office world of 2023.

        The last time an independent film broke into the top ten was in 2004, two decades ago, the decade the U.S. men’s soccer team shocked the World Cup world, and was the last full year in the lives of Pope John Paul II and Sister Lucia, who had a secret special screening of Passion of The Christ—which was the movie that broke into the top 10 of 2004—not connected with a big Hollywood studio—like Paramount, Disney, Sony, or Universal.

         The new feature film is produced not by some giganto Hollywood studio, but by Angel Studios based in Utah, and which I might add was attacked by Disney Studios for some infringement on streaming techniques which used a filter to screen nasty stuff—the same Disney Studios who sued Florida's DeSantis and recently lost.  Both Angel Studio and Disney Studios reached a settlement in 2020, with the main idea that the studio from Utah can concentrate on creating original content, while under the name of VidAngel will have a main focus on providing filters so that a person watching some video can dump any dirty objectionable words in a Hollywood flick.  As I understand from the internet, VidAngel offers customizable filters so that anyone can mute language they don't wish to hear and even skip scenes that to a viewer seems X-rated.  Angel Studios and VidAngel are separate companies.  

        The central core of the movie is in New York, where life outside the corridors of the rich was bleak and terrible; minorities like Jews, Catholics, Blacks, Italians and Poles were treated badly.  The movie is based on hard-core research on the life of Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini who came to America from Italy in 1889.  Most of us are not aware of her story, although she is well known in NY.  She helped the poor in more ways than you can count, took her vows in 1877, changing her name to Francis Xavier Cabrini—from Maria Francesca Cabrini—in honor of St. Francis Xavier.  But, no religious community wanted her because of her frail health—so on her own, found the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Secret Heart in 1880, at the age of 30.  

       For many years she was instrumental in creating hospitals and schools throughout the U.S.  She even found some in France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and Nicaragua.  Numerous stories abound to her that seem incredulous, including how a man was miraculously healed from blindness in 1921.  Yet, this is no holy moly movie only for Catholics.  Originally, she thought she would be sent to China but, instead was sent to the United States.  There she ran into some very dark places in the world, a world very different from 2024.  Yes, anything you can dream about in 2024 from any ghetto is nothing to what the heck occurred in early 1900 in the ghetto of Five Points.  This little blondie was stubborn and no easy quitter.  I will not give away the movie, and you can gain a better understanding from others, but I’d like to relate three short stories.  One relates to the Far West, another along the Hudson River, and the other a glass of water. 

 

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        Mother Cabrini loved the West and especially the mountains of Colorado.  She founded an orphanage in 1904 at a home in north Denver because many children of Italian immigrants were orphaned when their fathers died in mining accidents.  At this point in time, Denver was still part of the Wild West, a million miles away from modern metropolitan lives that exist today.  She was able to purchase the land because the sellers sold it for less than market value because there was no water to be had, and for two years, her sisters toiled to bring in water from afar.  One day, she told her sisters, “Lift that rock over there. And, start to dig.  You will find water fresh enough to drink and clean enough to wash.”  They had been to the such and such area of the land parcel. But, there was nothing there, they told her, experts had checked before.  Miraculously, to everybody’s amazement, water was found there, just as she said.  To this day, that little spring has enough water to be housed in an 8,000 gallon tank, that has never stopped running after over 100 years.  A replica of the grotto of Lourdes, France, was constructed in 1929 over that spring, which in turn was demolished by a bigger one in 1959 (photo above).  However, everything started for Cabrini and her sisters in New York, the state where most immigrants from Europe landed—remember Ellis Island and all that?  

        In NY, the order of Mother Cabrini were first able to purchase land, after collecting nickels and dimes, lots of nickels and dimes, land from the Jesuits.  They turned it into an orphanage and school for girls, but they had been able to buy it with another miracle.  This New York place along the Hudson R. was 50-acres, and again it had no water, their well had run dry, at first.  Who do you think discovered a natural spring on the property which everybody else had missed?  Mother Cabrini, of course.  Miraculously, water was found there, just as she said.  The story behind all this is that her love of God motivated everything she did, and in essence filled her with tireless energy.  She always spoke about the confidence she had in God.

        During her expansion westward, she established orphanages, schools, summer camps besides hospitals in cities like Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, and Seattle.  The blonde sister with blue eyes did not look like most Italians, but so what.  She always seemed to posses an unbound amount of energy and she was never afraid to speak her mind when it came to Jesus.  She might not recognize Seattle of today.  She first arrived there in 1903, where she found out some people had “not seen a church for over 20, 30, 40, and 50 years,” as she said. 

        She established Mount Carmel Mission on Beacon Hill.  Then developed a school known as Our Lady of Mount Virgin school and parish; later in 1918, it was relocated to a location on Lake Washington.  Here is that story connected to the Pacific Northwest.  Nestled in her room beneath dominant Mount Shasta, Mother Cabrini had one night, a dream of a large mansion, a beautiful house on a hilltop.  Her holy order still had nothing in Seattle but a convent, but one day while in a long walk, they spotted a beautiful carriage and had waved to it, and asked if they could get a ride back to the convent, so kaput were they.  This is the story of how they obtained a big beautiful building for their orphanage.  Mother Cabrini struck a conversation with a lady in the carriage and chatted about things including about her dream she had.  As the sisters were stepping out at their arrival to the convent, the lady said, “Wait. That dream about that house you described, is exactly like mine, and I never thought of parting with it but, if I may be allowed to enter your holy house for a moment, and receive a glass of water, your little orphans shall have their home with my blessing.”   A miracle, (and a little glass of water).  

        At 67, she died in 1917 from malaria, which somehow infected her heart’s inner lining (called chronic endocarditis in the medical books) a year before Our Lady of Mount Virgin school was officially moved to the hill of the dream—it is now called Villa Academy on 50th St.  She died in Columbus Hospital of Chicago, and was interred at what became Saint Cabrini Hospital.  

        About a hundred years later, the Dyker Heights Post Office was renamed in her honor.  Representative Max Rose first introduced the bipartisan legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 22, 2019.  It turned into an official Post Office located in an area that saw a lot of Italian immigration going back decades and decades, however, you may ask why?  Only because it is an area full of Italian heritage?  It is much more than that, for she was a special Italian, in both the secular world as in the religious world.  She became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized a saint on July 7, 1946.  Canonized by Pope Pius XII after a second miracle was studied to be true.  She was named Patroness of Immigrants 4 years later, and her work is carried on to this day by the Missionary Sisters who are found on six continents and fifteen countries wherever there is a need.  

        She went above and beyond to care for the welfare of the people.  As John L. Heyer pastoral associate at Sacred Heart and St. Stephen Parish had said, it was more than just about how a woman, who was by herself as an immigrant and didn’t know the language—became a citizen, helped others on that path, and helped those who were poor and ill.  What she did in her lifetime counted a lot for a lot of people.  A Post Office was renamed after her.  That’s nothing new, but that does not happen every other week, I know, I used to work for the U.S.Postal Service.  Post Offices are renamed after nationally recognized individuals who are studied by the Post Office, hometown heroes, and those who have made an impact on the local community.  AND, if you do see the new movie Cabrini, you will know what we mean.  

        Mother Cabrini’s story is hardly known by the average young person, yet she made an impact so large in the history books, even if like about 100 years after she died, to paraphrase Postal District Manager Eric Henry, “We are dedicating a post office to her” in her honor, just like the first African American woman to serve in Congress, Shirley Chisholm, or the country’s first support group for parents of lesbian and gay children, Jeanne and Jules Manford Post Office (Jackson Heights).  America is a melting pot, and everyone is entitled to be free and be given a chance, as long as there is no stampede on other's rights that turn them into dust.  The pastor of the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette also said it so well, “The honor given to the first American citizen to be canonized as a saint reminds us, all to do what we can to step out of our comfort zones and recognize the dignity and worth of every person regardless of race, ethnicity, or religious tradition . . .as we all live through a dark and challenging time.”  We must remember that this was the height of COVID-19, an alarming time when people were dying left and right, as I chronicle on my website.  The death factor during the height of COVID-19 was astronomical. 

       Yet, there is a quirk to this story.  Although since 1986, at least 25 Post Offices in N.Y.C have been renamed, there was turmoil in New York at first that made embroiled Representative Max Rose to start his drive on doing something about Mother Cabrini, and that is connected to 2018 after a campaign was created in N.Y.C. to honor women in New York history.  

       They let Americans of NY put to a vote of whom to recognize and in turn install monuments in their honor, to celebrate the historic impacts on and contributions to New York City.  There were some 2,000 nominations collected.  Guess who won?  Little Mother Cabrini.  

        She garnered the most votes.  However, nefarious hands got behind the story, and when it came time to announce the lucky four women who would have monuments built across the Big Apple, she was not one of them.  To be a Catholic in the early 1900s America was one thing, but history played out its lousy deal again by those with an anti-Catholic agenda, and they were strong enough to throw her nomination out the window of historic figures.  Whether they be Luciferans, atheists, or a select hidden group who wanted nothing good associated with Catholicism, they had the power to dethrone the will of the people.  In this world, I find there exist people who are subject to racism and anti-Catholicism, some are vocal, others use the mighty hand of stealth.  Representative Max Rose (born Nov. 28, 1986), former U.S. Army Ranger and 1st Arm Div, received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in combat in Afghanistan, rose a ruckus in NY.  And, luckily what followed was a positive to the will of the ordinary people, and no public objection was voiced when a statue was unveiled in Battery Park in honor of Mother Cabrini on Oct. 12, 2020, but not funded by N.Y.C, but by the New York State.  But, that was almost four years ago, and changes still do happen in New York, for as I stated, a huge Eucharistic March for peace was carried out by Catholics in the center of Manhattan on October 10, 2023—see my Fatima page—and no nasty opposition, no name calling arose nor the treatment of Catholics as second class citizens came about.  So the banner of liberty and equality for all at least was shown that October of 2023.

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