Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

I was born in 1850, in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, as the youngest of 13 children. Since my childhood, I wanted to become a missionary in China, following the example of the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier. I took my vows in 1877 and three years later, I founded the ‘Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus’, which offered a day school and served orphans. Ready to go to China to found a convent there, the pope personally asked me to go to North America instead. When my Sisters and I arrived in New York in 1889, we found a shocking reality there. The streets were full of immigrants that came to America in search of a better life but faced struggles and poverty instead. So we started to work and set up institutions for schooling and health care. Soon, we received requests to found schools, hospitals and orphanages in several countries all over the world. Thanks to God's infinite grace, we were able to establish 67 institutions. At the age of 67, I died in Chicago, on the 22nd of December 1917. On the 7th of July 1946, I became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized a saint.