A new film captures the life, spirit and testimony of Mother Francisca Javier Cabrini (1850-1917), founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and best known and honored as the patron saint of immigrants.
The film, titled Cabrini, It premiered on March 8, International Women’s Day. Written by Rod Barr and directed by renowned filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde, the play focuses on Cabrini’s initial ministry in New York City, which began in 1889 and was marked by his dogged persistence in starting and then expanding an urban ministry to help Italian immigrants, particularly Italian-American children.
“Mother Cabrini made things happen,” said J. Eustace Wolfington, the film’s executive producer, in an interview with Global Sisters Report. “She found solutions. She took care of the immigrant,” he added.
But beyond its portrayal of an important part of Cabrini’s life and ministry, the producer says the film is also intended to be a tribute to Catholic sisters around the world, whose work — he believes — is often overlooked. and it is not appreciated enough within the Church or by society in general.
“The film gives a voice” to the Catholic sisters, he asserted, while some nuns who saw it in private preview screenings thought that the work “has restored dignity to the sisterhood.”
The producer affirms that the reaction of the sisters who have seen the film has been enthusiastic, especially that of the members of the congregation that she founded.
“That’s Cabrini, that’s Cabrini,” the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus said after seeing the film’s preview, Wolfington said.
Two of these sisters are Diane Olmstead and Pietrina Raccuglia, both members of the congregation’s Guadalupe Province.
In a joint interview with GSR, they said that between them they had seen the film nine times—Raccuglia six times and Olmstead three times. They both stated that they would see each other again. Cabrini with great pleasure, and they plan to do it.
The nuns also expressed that the film was inspiring for many reasons: for depicting Cabrini’s spirituality; for telling us about the many challenges he faced in his ministry, which began in the gang-ridden Five Points area of New York; and for offering a faithful portrait of sisters working in the world.
“It’s a clue to his relationship with Jesus,” said Raccuglia, who chairs the board of the New York-based Cabrini Mission Foundation. The film explicitly describes “the mission of showing the love of Christ in the world, and that everyone is loved by God.”
“Cabrini shows how Mother Cabrini had a passion for Christ, she had a passion for humanity,” said Olmstead, provincial superior of the Province of Guadalupe.
The film poignantly portrays Cabrini’s persistence and attempts to defy obstacles, including deep-seated prejudices against Italians who had immigrated to the United States and a New York civic and political culture dominated by Protestants who refused to recognize the humanitarian efforts of the sister and her companions.
Cabrini, portrayed by Italian actress Cristiana Dell’Anna, also faced a sometimes uncooperative Catholic hierarchy in New York and Rome, although the film makes clear that the sister was able to overcome initial resistance from male clerics with her persistence, passion and good business sense.
Raccuglia points out that Cabrini’s relationship with Archbishop Michael Corrigan—the cornerstone of the film—was initially awkward, but that letters between them show that they became almost friends. (In the film, Corrigan is played by American actor David Morse.)
And although she was obedient to ecclesiastical authority, Cabrini sometimes grew impatient when asked to maintain her place as a woman. “She just wanted to hold the place for Jesus,” Raccuglia said.
“She always acted like a woman of the Church,” Olmstead said, adding: “She believed in authority, and she was a woman of her time. She was clear in her ministries that she was not disrespectful. She was obedient. But hers was not a blind obedience.”
However, the film shows that at almost every moment Cabrini faced a new challenge that he was ultimately able to overcome, to the amazement, frustration and then grudging admiration of figures such as Pope Leo XIII, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini, who at one point tells him: “You fascinate me, Cabrini. I don’t know when your faith ends and your ambition begins.”
That moment, writes critic Frank Scheck in a generally positive review published February 29 in The Hollywood Reporteris one of several in which the film “cleverly avoids turning the character into a cardboard saint.”
In fact, the film — which Scheck describes as an “old-fashioned, classic-style biopic” — doesn’t downplay the title character’s stubbornness in the face of adversity.
At one point, the protagonist says: “The world is too small for what I intend to do.”
But the film also makes clear that becoming a saint requires deep spiritual resources and perseverance, not just holiness.
And practical intelligence. “She was a saint,” Wolfington said. “But she was a great business woman. People were surprised at how smart she was,” he added.
“He knew how to work the system,” Raccuglia said.
The film is being distributed by Angel Studios, which also released the 2023 Monteverde film Sound of Freedom, focusing on child sex trafficking.
Wolfington, 91, said he has long been attached to Cabrini as a figure of respect and inspiration and made her his patron saint at age 23. But despite the place of honor that the nun occupies in the Catholic world, he hopes that the film can be universally received, both by Catholics and non-Catholics, who could see Cabrini as a holy humanitarian figure like Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi.
Although the film is not intended to directly comment on current American debates over immigration, Wolfington states that “Cabrini is a film of this time” and clearly recognizes that there is a long history of prejudice against immigrants in the United States.
At one point in the film, a passerby throws a brick with an ugly anti-Italian slur through the window of a hospital that Cabrini is renovating. In another scene, a fictional mayor of New York, played by two-time Oscar-nominated actor John Lithgow, laments that his wealthy constituents on Manhattan’s Upper West Side are tired of a “wave of parading brown-skinned filth.” through its streets with a nun as his Pied Piper”.
“The prejudices suffered by Italian immigrants are not exaggerated (in the film),” Wolfington says. “They were really persecuted. They were cheap labor. They lived in ghettos,” he said.
Raccuglia believes Cabrini’s passion for immigrant rights was so strong that if he were alive today he would be “on the border,” working on behalf of immigrants on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
What Cabrini did at the time, Wolfington said, was to instill “pride again in (immigrants).”
Such pride came from his own life experience. Cabrini was born in northern Italy, founded her congregation in 1880, and traveled with six other missionary sisters to the New World in 1889, despite her physical frailty—she was in poor health for much of her life.
At one point he considers whether he should accept his weaknesses or “serve his purpose.” He opted for the latter and died at the age of 67, living much longer than anyone expected.
“When Cabrini was convinced of something, nothing stopped her,” Olmstead said.
Cabrini had originally wanted to start missions in China, but Leo XIII pressured her to go to New York, with its large population of Italian immigrants.
The nun became an American citizen in 1909 and was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1946, being the first American to receive such an honor. Over 34 years of ministry, he founded 67 hospitals, orphanages and schools, according to press information provided by the film’s makers.
Although the film focuses only on his early years in New York, he went on to work in at least six other states in the United States, including Colorado, as well as in Latin America and Europe.
Still, Cabrini’s influence is still felt in New York:
- Cabrini Immigrant Services, a social services agency, continues to work to help newly arrived immigrants who face the many challenges of life in New York City.
- Cabrini Mission Foundation, based in New York, helps fund and support programs of the Missionary Sisters and their partners, including work on the U.S.-Mexico border.
- In Upper Manhattan, near Fort Tryon Park, Cabrini’s remains are placed on the altar of a chapel that daily attracts pilgrims from all over the world.
- Meanwhile, a monument to Cabrini was dedicated in 2020 in Battery Park in lower Manhattan, on a site overlooking the revered Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, monuments long associated with their connection to Cabrini’s legacy. American immigrants.
Cabrini It was not filmed in New York, but in and around Buffalo, New York, as well as other locations in Western New York, with additional scenes filmed in Rome.
Wolfington said he agreed to sign on as executive producer on the condition that net proceeds from the film be donated to charities, including the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
He hopes it will be a keystone for what he called “a big, big opening for an independent film.”
Olmstead and Raccuglia said that while they hope the film inspires some women to consider joining their congregation, another hope is that viewers of Cabrini “Get out of yourself and help someone in need,” Raccuglia said. Or as Olmstead said, “may they be missionaries of love in the world.”
They also hope that Cabrini give the public an idea of what religious life is really like, since many films, in her opinion, do not accurately depict the life or ministry of the sisters.
“Yes, this film is about Mother Cabrini, but also about the lives of religious women and the work they do in the world,” Olmstead said.
“This film,” Raccuglia said, “is a tribute to sisters around the world.”
Note: This article was originally published in English on March 8, 2024.
