“What the world needs now, is Love Sweet Love”, some of us may remember this song of Burt Barcharach and Hal David that came out in 1965. As the song says, “It’s the only thing there’s just too little of... No, not just for some, but for everyone...”
Yes, this world needs so much love as we come to a turning point where love is being replaced with hatred, bullying, xenophobia, violence against anyone who is “different” than the white male Caucasian. Women are belittled, Indigenous peoples in countries world-wide are looked upon as being subhuman or inhuman, hence are treated as if they have no value. People who are homosexual or transgender are not even considered to be human. What is the criteria for dismissing a human being? Too many politicians exhibit an unconscious or perhaps even conscious assumption that some people in this world are not human...and this is in supposedly educated nations. Shame on us if we remain silent, for therein is our consent.
Enter, “Cabrini” the movie about a young Italian woman who dared the powers of Church and state to say “no” to the dream of a better world for all.
Not only does the movie take the “religiosity” out of religion, but inserts an interesting dynamic between: women and the men who hold power, Italian immigrants and U.S. citizens, a tribal worldview and an inclusive one, the rich and privileged of New York City, and the poor in the slums.
Frances Cabrini, born in 1850, had only a few years to live because of a compromised lung condition she acquired when she almost drowned as a child. She founded her own Religious order because she was rejected by established orders due to her ill health. The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, under Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, felt called to the far east to minister to the poor and forgotten. The movie “CABRINI”, graphically depicts how 6 women were able to effect major change in the hearts of the citizens of New York City after having been commissioned by Pope Leo XIII.
Upon arriving in New York the women experienced firsthand, the plight of the Five Points Slum district in which Italian immigrants lived isolated from the rest of the citizens of NY City (“Rats have it better”, described their condition)
The Institute of The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus established seven homes and a free school and nursery in its first five years. Its good works brought Cabrini to the attention of Giovanni Scalabrini, Bishop of Piacenza, and of Pope Leo XIII.[2]
In 1889, at the suggestion of Pope Leo XIII, the Sisters came to New York, and opened convents in the Archdioceses of Chicago, Denver, Newark, Seattle, and Los Angeles and the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Scranton.[3] In 1892 they established Columbus Hospital in New York City,[4] which later became Cabrini Medical Center and operated until 2008.
Perhaps the compassionate viewer is able to appreciate these times in which the movie was produced and the actual tenor of the day in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. We saw in the portrayal of Mother Cabrini a woman spurred on by intense love for the orphans and abandoned of her society. We also saw how anger fuelled her passion to embrace those who had no love. Anger and love provided the energy Mother Cabrini needed to accomplish all she did.
-Sister Kathleen Lichti, csj
Image: Felix Mooneeram/Unsplash