Cabrini

Directed by Alejandro Monteverde

Angel Studios (Distributor)

Released March 8, 2024

Mother Cabrini (as I will henceforth call her) was an icon of the years immediately preceding the Vatican Council. For in 1946 did she not become the First American Saint? Her images are found in many of the older churches in New York City, as you can see on this blog under The Churches of New York. Later, she fell into nearly total obscurity even though she – or at least most of her – is buried near the Cloisters in northern Manhattan. To rekindle devotion to a saint with so many local ties, the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny has sponsored masses and pilgrimages to this shrine culminating in festive liturgies. Our last mass was in 2014 – but several other Traditionalist groups have since returned. (You can find descriptions and many pictures of all these events by searching for Cabrini on this site.)

So, I felt obligated to view this film – with some trepidation. For Roman Catholic inspirational films generally have not been, in my experience, a successful genre.  My disquiet was increased by what I saw in the theater before the film even began. Posters advertised a coming exploitation film Immaculate – apparently about a Rupnik-like convent in Italy.  And one of the coming attractions dealt with the infamous Cabrini-Green project in Chicago! 

The good news about Cabrini is that I could sit through the entire lengthy film – it held my attention. It is a well photographed film that moves on briskly despite its substantial length. I cannot say, though, that Cabrini is a masterpiece of cinematic art. The film is anything but subtle – the director goes to work with a sledgehammer. The many dramatic crises in the movie are telegraphed to us a mile in advance. Throughout the film the director presents to us a series of confrontations between Mother Cabrini and the pope, Archbishop Corrigan of New York (on one occasion, in a loud exchange of views in an empty Catholic Church!), a Caruso-like Italian tenor, the mayor of New York and the entire Italian parliament. I found the style of these encounters particularly unconvincing – although I would defer to Cabrini experts as to their historicity.  At other places the director employs symbolism or dream sequences to vary the visual language of the film.  These images, however, were not fully integrated into the narrative and their significance not immediately clear.

The heavy handedness of the direction is reinforced by a grandiose, operatic score. For example, at several key points of the narrative what seems to be a direct quote from the prelude to Wagner’s Das Rheingold is played! Several of these dramatic climaxes reference an early near-death-by-drowning experience of Cabrini. In these sequences Cabrini is depicted almost as a Rhine maiden in Wagner’s opera! 

I didn’t think the production recreates a believable 19th century atmosphere – for me, a major disappointment. The sets have very little resemblance to anything one can still see in the older sections of New York City. (That’s understandable; the film was mostly shot in Buffalo). Some of these sets seemed downright strange. So, for example, in repetitive scenes in the New York archbishop’s immense office, numerous candles, placed on all kinds of different candlesticks, are burning regardless of the time of day. And in the background, through a window, we see a church that definitely is not St. Patrick’s cathedral.

But in a film like this the didactic purpose takes precedence over artistic flights of fancy. And the purpose is to show us a portrait of Mother Cabrini. She is depicted as a modern American feminist. Throughout the film, she must confront – sometimes forcefully and loudly – the white male hierarchy that ruled the Church and the City.  Again and again, she accuses them of blocking her proposals just because she is a woman. With several exceptions the male characters of the movie are depicted as brutal oppressors, violent thugs and bullies, bureaucratic functionaries and in the case of the Catholic clergy in New York, incompetents or ninnies. Exceptions are a helpful Irish doctor, a reporter for the New York Times (naturally!), and Pope Leo XIII, portrayed by an actor who does not resemble at all the historic personage but acts as a Francis-like universal manager.  Strangely, the only female character other than Cabrini who receives any development is a friendly prostitute (one of the “marginalized”!) who becomes a companion to Mother Cabrini’s band of sisters.

America is depicted as an almost nightmarish world of oppression, prejudice and exploitation. Someone even states ”This land is built on the blood of immigrants!” – or words to that effect. Honestly, one wonders why all these Italian immigrants were coming to such a country in the first place! Mother Cabrini acts as a secular social reformer, founding a succession of orphanages and then a new hospital, all in the teeth of opposition from Church and state. Cabrini speaks out against exploitation, racial and ethnic prejudice and battles for the economic rights of immigrants. She organizes political and media backing and assembles a multi-ethnic, multi-religious circle of financial supporters for her hospital.  

The film does not try to establish any connection between what Mother Cabrini is doing and the Catholic religion. Holy pictures – including those of the Sacred Heart – are seen in rooms and on the exterior of buildings in the Italian quarter, but they seem to be mainly decorative.  Apart from a funeral procession, no liturgical acts are shown. Nobody seems to pray either. At times, at dramatic moments of frustration, Mother Cabrini does seem to meditate, seated by herself (once in a chapel). 

In fact, this film completely distorts the role of the Catholic Church in Mother Cabrini’s mission. Cabrini was not unique as the leader of a female religious order operating in missionary territory. The film does not mention the role of the Scalabrinian order in directing her to the United States in the first place and then supporting her initiatives. The hostile reception from the clergy she receives upon landing in New York is exaggerated. Archbishop Corrigan was indeed at first cool but later he supported Mother Cabrini in her plans as well as other aspects of the Italian apostolate (like national parishes). Cabrini benefited from the support of several wealthy American women from an early stage of her New York apostolate.  Yes, there was friction with the hierarchy, some parish priests and the non-Italian Catholic laity. But from the beginning Mother Cabrini also could draw on the support of significant lay and clerical patrons and on the accomplishments of her predecessors. That included the Catholic Irish, much-maligned here, who by 1889 had created a functioning system of Catholic parishes, schools, orphanages and hospitals on Manhattan Island (and had developed into a dominant political force as well).

But of course, the Catholic Church also was an immensely positive spiritual force among the Italian immigrants themselves. The depiction in this film of the Italian community as a disorganized rabble is misleading. The immigrants created societies, parishes and guilds relating to the province, town or village from where they came. As time went on, they recreated in America the processions and festivals they had celebrated in Italy. The family structures so important among Italians also provided major support in the new country. 

And what of Mother Cabrini’s own spirituality? For a witness to that, we have the nasty remarks of Ida Frederike Görres – a professional hagiographer! – writing in 1959 when Cabrini’s celebrity was at its height. The saint’s piety, however, was not at all to the taste of representatives of the proto-Conciliar movement in Western Europe: 

“I have been ruminating on Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, surely a classical example of that special, perfectly genuine and lawful brand of Christian piety which can be completely unintelligent. On the face of it, that is, for obviously all these saints are, in fact, filled with the Holy Ghost; but with them the Spirit makes no use of their “mind” as intelligence, only of their practical sense…. In 67 years of holiness truly lived – most of which were spent in working among people, and in the professional guidance of souls!   – there is no record of a single “unforgettable sentence.” …. Mute all of it. Completely devoid of self-reflection…What can this mean? That charity – i.e., wisdom lived – can exist without the mind. 1)

I will not speculate on the truth of these condescending remarks. For Görres, Mother Cabrini was an exemplar of simple faith and piety, if regrettably not a so-called “spiritual genius.” But that is not what Mother Cabrini aspired to be!

This setting aside of what is specifically Catholic is a deliberate choice of the producers, who wanted to present Mother Cabrini as an “entrepreneur,” “an extraordinary woman who happened also to be a nun.” 2) Indeed, they may well consider such a “secular” depiction of the saint to be eminently Catholic. I am sure that Pope Francis, for example, would appreciate the exclusive focus of the film on social action and the defense of immigrant rights. I also suspect that the negative depiction of certain clerics in this film is based on the experiences of today, not of 1889. In summary, this film may not help us understand the life of a missionary sister in the United States of 1889, but it tells us a lot about the self-understanding of leading Catholic circles in 2024.

Now Cabrini ends with a newsreel of her canonization in 1946, preceded by a cartoon showing the spread of her order all over the world. But what has happened since then? In the last few decades apostolate after apostolate of her order, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, has closed: the hospitals in New York City and Chicago, the high school next to her shrine in Manhattan, Cabrini University near Philadelphia in this very year.  Even the property on the Hudson River which, as depicted in this film, Mother Cabrini acquired in 1890 for her orphanage was sold last year to the Coptic Orthodox Church. 3) (The institution itself closed years earlier after a series of scandals and crimes.) Mother Cabrini’s order seems to have followed the same downward trajectory to “completion” as have other mainstream Catholic women’s’ religious communities. Assuming the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart have adopted an understanding of mission such as that ascribed to Mother Cabrini by this film, these consequences are unsurprising and inevitable. For people want to rally to a saint who still lives with us today, not a social reformer of the past, however well-intentioned and indomitable. 

1. Görres, Ida Frederike, Broken Lights at 364 (The Newman Press, Westminster, 1964 (German original 1960))
2. Basile, Paul, Cabrini Film a Miracle in the Making, (Fra Noi, 2/18/2024)
3. “A Catholic organization sells 522 acres in West Park to another faith-based group,” (HudsonValley1.com, 8/25/2023)