Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini

Description

Mº. Cabrini was newly professed in her late 20s when Cdl. Pecci became Leo XIII. Di Donato mentions Pope Leo's love of St. Thomas.

Cdl. Spellman gave this book the imprimatur in August 1960.

ref:9.62-65: How Mº. Cabrini dealt with immodestly dressed women.

ref:9.76: "…illegitimate children of every class and color. She would not permit the admission of these children until their fathers had made them legitimate by law, Church, and spirit."

ref:11.8: Mº. Cabrini:

Pray much without tiring, because the salvation of Mankind does not depend on material success, nor on sciences that cloud the intellect. Neither does it depend on arms and human industries, nor on sterile and diplomatic congresses, nor on worldly means. Pray much, for the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of souls does not depend on human eloquence, or the grace of style and rhetoric, but upon our Spouse Jesus alone, Who enlightens the mind, moves the will, sows virtue, and animates us to undertake perfect works.

ref:12.75-6 about Arizona:

“As we traversed the Arizona desert [circa 1905], the hot sun refracting from the fiery sands made the interior of our [train] car a furnace. Knowing how much Mother was suffering, I could not stay still, and finally exclaimed, ‘What a brutal sun!’

“Despite her pain, Mother answered me, ‘How now, you lament what God sends? God Who with His wisdom has created the sun, God is your Spouse, and you criticize His work? The sun is one of the most superb things of His creation. It truly gives a living vision of the purity and potency of God, with its splendor and warmth. Never permit yourself a similar expression again. We have always to be content with whatever is sent to us by Jesus. He is our Spouse and we are not to annoy him with complaints about what He does.’”

ref:13.90-1 about Petrified Forest, Arizona:

It is a labyrinth of dreamlike architectural forms. There is no reason to envy the pyramids of Egypt or the majestic mausoleums of the Pharaohs, decorated as they are with the most curious ornaments, when nature can produce these marvels, resembling sometimes lace or veil, and giving at other times a vision of festoons hanging from the rocks painted in an endless variety of colors.

Diaphanous tints of great delicacy are also to be seen. The dignified mountains which dominate this abyss mutate their color according to the hour of the day, so that the rubies you see now change themselves later on into emeralds, become as dazzling as diamonds under the powerful rays of the sun, and in the evening time, glow like sapphires. In the presence of such an imposing spectacle, man feels very small. In the eye of the Faithful, this is an image, though a faint one, of God.

ref:13.17-34 on how she dealt with contractors who cheated her.

Francesca Maria Cabrini was born in 1850 in a small village on the Lombard Plain of Italy. At the moment of her birth, a cloud of snow-white doves appeared and circled the village, an augury of her future sanctity. Tiny frail and sickly, she was enthralled as a child by tales of the adventures of missionaries to faraway lands, and grew up with one burning desire: to join a religious order and tend to the physical and spiritual needs of the people of China. But no order would have her—her health was deemed too precarious. But her dream remained, and she set out to see it realized. Her first step, a formidable one, was obtaining an audience with His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII. This she did, after overcoming many obstacles. It was a meeting that would change her life, and the lives of so many in America. Mother Cabrini was granted her wish to start an orphanage abroad—but not in China, as she had requested. “Not East, but West, my child,” said Pope Leo, and her path was set.

PIETRO DI DONATO'S Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini is a powerful nonfiction account of a woman whose gripping story of perseverance, courage, and profound godliness serves as a paradigm for the new age of faith. Written in the fluid prose that made it a huge popular success upon its initial publication in 1960, Immigrant Saint is a book that makes us re-examine, and ultimately reaffirm, our belief in the possibilities of prayer, the validity of miracles, and the crucial importance of good works.

“…eloquent, fascinating, miraculous”—Saturday Review

Pietro Di Donato (April 3, 1911 - January 19, 1992) was an American writer and bricklayer best known for his novel, Christ in Concrete (1939), which recounts the life and times of his bricklayer father, Geremio, who was killed in 1923 in a building collapse. The book, which portrayed the world of New York's Italian-American construction workers during The Great Depression, was hailed by critics in the United States and abroad as a metaphor for the immigrant experience in America, and cast di Donato as one of the most celebrated Italian American novelists of the mid-20th century.

Born in West Hoboken, New Jersey (now Union City) to Geremio, a bricklayer, and Annunziata Chinquina, Di Donato had seven other siblings. His parents had emigrated from the town of Vasto, in the region of Abruzzo in Italy.

Following his father's death in 1923, Pietro left school in the seventh grade to become a construction worker in the trade union in order to help support his family. He retained his membership in the union his entire life. His father's death and his life growing up as an immigrant in West Hoboken were the inspiration for his writings.

When his mother died a few years later, Pietro assumed full responsibility for providing for his family. Though he had little formal education, during a strike in the building trades he had wandered into a library and discovered French and Russian novels, becoming particularly fond of Émile Zola. He also took night classes at City College in construction and engineering.

The family was eventually able to move to Northport, Long Island, where he continued to work as a mason, and was inspired by Zola's work to write about his own experiences in the Italian immigrant community.

Di Donato died of bone cancer in Stony Brook, Long Island in 1992 at the age of 80.