Mother Cabrini: Relics of a Trusting Heart
By Brent Taghap
Read More Below: "While the sisters scrambled for water, Mother Cabrini calmly made the sign of the cross with her reliquary, and the fire stopped before reaching the children’s wing."
On November 13, we celebrate the feast day of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, affectionately known by the Church as Mother Cabrini.
She is our first American-citizen Saint and was canonized in 1946 by Pope Pius XII (Author’s note: Mother Cabrini is the first American-citizen Saint; the first American-born Saint is St. Elizabeth Ann Seton — a distinction that is often confused.)
A Brief Biography
Mother Cabrini was born in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano in Italy to a pious farming family. From her very birth, she was considered to be too frail and susceptible to illness and this frailty followed her throughout her 67 years on Earth. After being turned away from several religious orders due to this frailty and after a formative turbulent period at the “House of Providence", she founded her own community, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Seeking papal approval, she traveled to Rome intending to obtain permission to send her sisters to Asia. Instead, Pope Leo XIII redirected her mission with the now-famous instruction: “Not to the East, but to the West.” He urged her to assist the struggling Italian immigrants in the United States.
Mother Cabrini immediately set out for New York with seven sisters, beginning what would become her “Empire of Hope.” A well-known saying among the Cabrinian family summarizes her extraordinary impact: “67 institutions in 67 years.”
She and her sisters founded schools, orphanages, hospitals, training centers, and homes across North and South America. After her death, the Missionary Sisters even expanded into Asia, fulfilling her original desire.
Mother Cabrini’s Relics
Since the The Relic Project focuses on the relics of our great Saints, I wanted to dive into Mother Cabrini's relics and her own affinity for these precious treasures of our Church.
Mother Cabrini's life and works have been extensively studied and documented, as they should, but I feel that her active life often overshadows her deep spirituality and mysticism.
First, let's discuss Mother Cabrini's relics and why we have so many of them.
As is typical of the beatification process, Mother Cabrini's body was exhumed from her tomb in New York. This process serves to see if a potential Blessed's body is incorrupt (which is not a requirement for Beatification or Canonization) and to prepare relics for the cause of canonization.
When Mother Cabrini's casket was opened, they found her body had undergone the normal rate of decay except for her perfectly preserved skeleton and heart, which was still fleshy. Her skeleton was prepared to be distributed to various places where she had opened institutions while her heart was placed in a specially made reliquary to be sent to her home in Codogno, Italy.
Major Skeletal Relics
New York: The majority of her skeletal remains are enshrined beneath a wax effigy crafted by a prosthetic technician who attributed graces to her intercession.
Chicago: Her right femur is enshrined within the altar of the National Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, housed in a reliquary made by a brass smith who also experienced graces through her intercession. The shrine also preserves a relic of her hair.
Colorado: Her right index finger is kept in Golden, Colorado, at the site of the orphanage she founded.
Sant’Angelo: Her right forearm is enshrined in the basilica dedicated to St. Anthony and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini; a piece of her spine rests in her birth house, now a museum.
Rome: Her skull is housed in the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, within a wax effigy similar to the one in New York.
The Transverberation and Heart Relics
Mother Cabrini's heart relic, as mentioned earlier, is in Codogno. Before we talk about where these two, yes two, heart relics rest we must talk about Mother Cabrini's transverberation of the heart.
In her retreat notes, she describes Jesus showing her His Sacred Heart and saying:
"My beloved, your heart is mine. I want it for myself forever, so I take it from your breast because from now on, you will work with my heart."
She wrote that she felt her heart torn from her chest, followed by over a year of unusual palpitations that puzzled doctors. From that point on, she felt herself melting with love for her beloved Jesus, especially when she was before the image of the Sacred Heart that always looked at her and spoke to her so tenderly.
Mother’s precious heart was placed in a reliquary and sent back to Italy, with Codogno as its final destination.
A local priest expressed his desire for “a pinch” of Mother’s heart to take back to his congregation. When he opened the reliquary to take his portion, the perfectly intact heart deflated.
Feeling so guilty, he left “the pinch” to the Missionary Sisters after his death. Today, the main portion of her heart rests in the Church of Mt. Tabor in Codogno, while the “pinch” is housed at a Cabrinian school, the same school Mother Cabrini attended as a child.
Second-Class Relics
In addition to these first-class relics, we have a plethora of second-class relics associated with Mother Cabrini.
Today, the Missionary Sisters distribute small clippings of these precious relics on important days such as her Feast Day or her birthday (July 15). Besides this, other interesting second-class relics include:
- Habits worn by Mother Cabrini
- Altar linens she made
- Rosaries
- Journals, letters, and retreat notes
- A dental screw
- Her desk
- Her bench in New York
Mother Cabrini’s Devotion to Relics
She carried with her at all times a reliquary locket with 36 relics encased inside, which she referred to as her "little crusaders."
In her letters, she often alludes to a house of hers hosting the relics of a Saint or being gifted a relic by a bishop when opening a new institution with the intent of having it placed within the altar of the chapel.
To Mother Cabrini, these precious treasures were tangible reminders that she was not alone in her efforts to bring the Love of Christ to all corners of the earth.
One remarkable story tells of a fire at her Codogno orphanage. While the sisters scrambled for water, Mother Cabrini calmly made the sign of the cross with her reliquary, and the fire stopped before reaching the children’s wing.
A favorite story of mine that is referenced in one of her biographies is when a fire broke out at her orphanage in Codogno. While the sisters were panicking and trying to fetch water to extinguish the quickly growing fire, Mother Cabrini, without missing a beat, made a sign of the cross with her reliquary and the fire subsided before it could reach the wing of the building where the children were still peacefully asleep.
Besides the wonder and awe that Mother Cabrini's active and spiritual life inspires within us, something we can take away and emulate is that she operated in complete and total trust in the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Everywhere she went, she saw the face of Christ in the stranger, the immigrant, the orphan child, the sick, and the poor.
Like Mother Cabrini, who so often repeated the words of St. Paul, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," let us remember her example today and bring Christ's love to everyone we encounter.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us!
- Maynard, Theodore, and Timothy Michael Dolan. Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Frances Cabrini. Ignatius Press, 2024.
- Saverio de Maria, and Rose Basile Green. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1984.
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