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202 • Part II. The Sacraments: The Faith Celebrated
as Jewish and Protestant.The hospital had free wards for the poor and pri-
vate rooms for the rich,whose fees helped finance the care of the poor. She
built other Columbus hospitals in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle,
New Orleans, and Chicago.
She continued to visit the various convents and institutions she
founded in Europe. She also sailed to Brazil and Argentina to expand the
work of her community. Her thirty-seven years of apostolic service saw her
almost constantly on the move. She could be found deep in a Denver
mine encouraging Italian American miners or, on another occasion, at a
scaffold holding hands and praying with Italian American prisoners who
were about to be hanged.
When she died in 1917, she left behind sixty-seven convents in Europe,
the United States, and South America and 1,500 Missionary Sisters of the
Sacred Heart. She had become a citizen of the United States in 1909 and
was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. At her canonization
in 1946, Pius XII said this in his homily:
Wheredid sheacquireall that strengthand the inexhaustibleenergy
by which she was able to perform so many good works and to sur-
mount so many difficulties? She accomplished all this through the
faith that was always so vibrant in her heart; through the divine love
that burned within her; and, finally, through the constant prayer by
which she was so closely united to God. . . . She never let anything
turn her aside from striving to please God and to work for his glory
for which nothing, aided by grace, seemed too difficult or beyond
human strength. (
Liturgy of the Hours
, vol. IV, 2022)
Mother Cabrini lived deeply the mission of the Church to bring Christ’s
compassion and care to all people. She responded generously to the
grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation that binds Christians to such a
deeper identification with the Church and her mission.
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