Mother Cabrini's China and Asia
Pope Leo XIV yesterday spoke about the great Italian patron saint of migrants, who dreamt of going on a mission to the East like Saint Francis Xavier. After her death, her fellow sisters fulfilled this dream in Zhejiang and Henan until its forced closure under Mao. Nevertheless, it still continues through the Scalabrinian family who chose her as their patron in Asia.
Milan (AsiaNews) – During his brief visit to the Italian region of Lombardy, Pope Leo XIV stopped in Pavia, the city where the remains of Saint Augustine are venerated, as well as Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, the birthplace of Saint Frances (Francesca) Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), a great religious sister who joined the huge flow of migrants who left Italy for America, where she died in Chicago.
Citing her service to the Church, Leo asked: “What could be timelier than a missionary charism dedicated to the service of migrants?"
The pontiff also noted that this choice was born during Francesca Cabrini’s childhood when she dreamt of going on a mission to China.
When she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880, she placed the new religious congregation under the protection of Saint Francis Xavier, and took his name.
Pope Leo XIII suggested to her that migration was the most important missionary frontier at that time and so, in 1889, she left for the United States, where she learnt English and Spanish and began to open schools, hospitals and orphanages for immigrants across the continent.
What few know, however, is that her loving gaze towards Asia never waned. After she died, her desire to reach the Far East was fulfilled by members of her congregation.
In 1926, six Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart – three Americans, two Italians and one Argentinian – left Seattle bound for China.
On their arrival in Shanghai, they were greeted by Joseph Loh Pa-hong, a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist, a prominent figure in local Catholicism, who had met them in Seattle. He led them to Kaishing, present-day Jiaxing in neighbouring Zhejiang, where they immediately began their educational activities.
Four years later, a second group of missionaries arrived in China. Some taught in a school run by the Marist Fathers in Wei Hwei Fu, Henan province, while others devoted themselves to teaching and running a medical dispensary in Chang Te Fu.
In Henan the nuns also ran an orphanage for about two hundred abandoned children and a prestigious girls' school for the youth of the local elite.
Many female students came closer to Christianity through daily contact with the missionaries.
In the 1930s the first Chinese novice joined the congregation, followed a short time later by other young women, a sign of the nuns’ growing influence in the area. Their work was, however, hindered by the political events of the time.
During the Chinese Civil War, communist forces led by Mao Zedong surrounded the area where they worked in Henan, leaving them isolated. They moved initially to the south of the country but were eventually forced to return to the United States in 1951.
Today the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart no longer have their own communities in Asia, but the charism of Mother Cabrini is carried out locally by Scalabrinian missionaries (whose founder, Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, had encouraged and followed Mother Cabrini in choosing service to migrants).
In 1957 Francesca Cabrini was chosen as the patron saint of the province of Asia and Australia by this religious congregation. In addition to the Philippines, the Scalabrinian missionaries are present in Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam.
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