March 24, 2024, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

Why you should see 'Cabrini' and learn about her selfless quest

By Mike Haynes

                Don’t skip “Cabrini” because you’re not Catholic.

                Don’t skip it because you’re not Italian.              

Don’t skip it because the title reminds you of opera singers. (The movie does include just a little opera singing, but that isn’t what it’s about.)

                Just don’t skip it.

                Here are two reasons to see “Cabrini”:

Cristiana Dell'Anna as Mother Francesca Cabrini

According to Angel Studios, executive producer J.E. Wolfington agreed to help make the film on two conditions: (1) that it would be about a great woman who just happened to be a nun, and (2) that a 501(c)(3) entity would be set up so that all the net revenues would go to charity.

Both of those stipulations were met, and the film’s heroine, Mother Francesca Cabrini, was the definition of charity. With some dramatic liberties that add characters and condense timelines, “Cabrini” is the story of her selfless quest to help orphans and immigrants in the New York City of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The movie begins with harsh coughing by Mother Cabrini, played by Cristiana Dell’Anna, and a doctor telling the young woman she might have two years to live. That doesn’t stop her from seeking a missionary appointment abroad, and Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) sends her from Italy to America to minister to the masses of Italians who have sailed to New York in search of better lives only to find filth, hunger and discrimination.

Her persistence – to be exhibited throughout the story – results in Mother Cabrini and a small group of other sisters sighting the Statue of Liberty in 1889. They make do with a broken-down building in the city’s Five Points district, searching muddy streets and climbing down sewer ladders to find children they can move into their makeshift orphanage.

                The sisters encounter heartaches – such as the death of an orphan boy in an industrial accident – and resistance from racist residents, city officials (John Lithgow plays the mayor) and even the local archbishop (David Morse). Through it all, Mother Cabrini not only survives but succeeds with her ambitious ventures to aid the poor.

                  The archbishop does allow his Christian kindness to outshine city and church politics and offers buildings and land formerly owned by the Jesuit order to Cabrini so she can build a proper children’s home.

                One catch is that water is scarce on the property, but Cabrini and her followers overcome the problem by searching for water and digging a well manually themselves.

     

Federico Ielapi as Paolo and Cristiana Dell'Anna
as Mother Cabrini in "Cabrini"

           Actress Dell’Anna’s unyielding yet sympathetic face is perfect to convey the grim determination that takes Cabrini well beyond her doctor’s prognosis and past her initial, vague mission to help disadvantaged immigrants. She manages to open a hospital with funds from New York Italian, Irish and Jewish groups and even travels to Rome to ask for money from the Italian Senate to finish the project.

                At one point, the pope questions Cabrini’s motives, wondering whether she is trying to create her own empire instead of doing the work of God. She replies that she wants “an empire of hope.”

                As the film ends, we are told that Cabrini lived to be 67 years old, establishing 67 missionary institutions for the sick and poor in New York, Chicago, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Latin America and Europe. She became a U.S. citizen in 1909, and in 1946, an estimated 120,000 people filled Soldier Field in Chicago when the Catholic Church canonized her as the first American saint.

                Mother Cabrini certainly must have been a saint, whether in the Catholic definition,  the Protestant use of the term as any born-again Christian or the way I remember people describing a person who did good deeds and lived an admirable life: “She’s a saint.”

She took to heart Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ …

“…’Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

If you don’t see “Cabrini,” do think seriously about her example.