Who is Mother Cabrini?

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, commonly know as "Mother Cabrini", was born in Italy and became an American citizen in 1909.
She was born in Sant'Angelo Lodigiano in Lombardy on July 15, 1850, to a modest farming family. Attracted to a missionary life since her childhood, Francesca nevertheless began her apostolic life in an orphanage directed by two women with little spirituality. There she became a sister, purifying and maturing her missionary ideal in the midst of suffering. She found a profound experience of God and an intense Gospel vision in the spirituality of the Sacred Heart.
In 1880, Mother Cabrini founded the Institute of th Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Yesus in Codogno. Even though her original missionary dream was directed to China, historical circumstances and the command of Pope Leo XIII changed her direction to North and South America where millions of Italians were immigrating in search of work, hope and a better life. Mother Cabrini thus became the voice, advocate, guardian and mother to these myriads of immigrantes. On their behalf, she opened schools, orphanages, boarding schools, hospitals and social centers, helping them to be integrated into new cultures. But her missionary zeal was not limited to immigrants.
She traveled continually, sailing the Atlantic Ocean 24 times, crossing the Andes on horseback, traveling in train, stagecoach and on foot in every land. She founded schools across the United States, Central America, Brazil. Argentina and in Europe.
Wherever she went, Mother Cabrini spread the love of the Heart of Jesus. She sought to make this love real through deeds and concrete responses, through tre witness of her sisters, through prayer, solidarity, and a culture of life and hope.
Mother Cabrini died in Chicago on Dec. 22, 1917. She was beatified on November 13, 1938 and canonized on July 7, 1946. In 1950 she was proclamaid "Universal Patroness of Immigrants" by Popo Pius XII.