I was a Catholic school student for twelve years of my life. I enjoyed checking out books on the lives of the saints from our library but soon felt overwhelmed by the seeming perfection of most the people portrayed in those stories. Somehow they did not seem at all like the real people that I knew and loved. I recall once hearing that Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first American saint but I knew little about her and had lost my interest in following up on her story. I had discovered the Nancy Drew mysteries by then and had abandoned my curiosity about the saints.
Years later I would attend a church in Houston, Texas named for St. Frances Cabrini and eventually ran the religious education program for the children of the parish along with my friends Shirley, and two women named Judy. I remember seeing a photo of Mother Cabrini when I worked each day and she looked like a kindly person whom I assumed was another one of those perfect individuals who I would never be able to emulate with my many human flaws. It would be long after I had eventually become a teacher of mathematics and then a school administrator and finally a retiree that I would learn more about the patron saint of immigrants from a friend.
During the height of the Covid 19 pandemic I sheltered in place like so many. I found ways of making the best of the situation by teaching home schooled students remotely and tutoring public school students who wanted a little extra push to better understand the concepts that they were learning via Zoom. I also spent more hours “connecting” with people on Facebook and writing blogs while checking on my husband’s ninety year old father and his wife. I made a game of being somewhat sequestered and somehow managed to make it through the times relatively unscathed.
One day I received a message from a woman who had been in the class behind me in high school. She had been reading my posts on Facebook as well as my blogs and felt that there was a certain kinship between us. She wanted my phone number so that we might actually talk with each other and thus an amazing friendship began to bloom.
Dr. Bren Ortega Murphy was a tenured professor at Loyola University in Chicago and our conversations focused on the issues of the time and her work as a professor. We were both serious thinkers but we also had our impish sides and enjoyed decorating our homes for each of the seasons and holidays. Bren began sending me little cards and packages with items that she thought I might enjoy. She insisted that I must come stay with her for a visit when we were all free to travel again. We began to plot an extended friendship in between our more academic discussions.
One day Bren asked me if I had seen her documentary about nuns in America. Of course I had no idea that she had created such a thing so I politely admitted my ignorance. She sent me a link to her film and I watched it as soon as we had ended our conversation.
I new that Bren had a collection of photos, cartoons and porcelain renderings of nuns but I had not understood the extent to which she had studied their impact on society. Admittedly I wasn’t expecting much from the documentary. After all how interesting could stories about nuns actually be? Nonetheless I wanted to see Bren’s take on the ladies who had been so much a part of my own upbringing and history.
Bren’s documentary was narrated by Susan Sarandon and it proved to be exceptional. It focused on the courage and gutsiness of several nuns who had impacted the lives of downtrodden groups and individuals. Among them was Mother Frances Cabrini, the namesake of my old parish church. From the film I learned that she had come to America from Italy to help Italian immigrants in New York City who were struggling in poverty, neglect and outright prejudice. With an iron will Mother Cabrini overcame one challenge after another to first create an orphanage for the many Italian children whose parents had died under the dire conditions of the Five Points slums in which they lived. Eventually she built a hospital as well and went on to repeat her work in Chicago and other parts of the United States and the world. She was my kind of saint, a tough and compassionate women determined to nurture the underserved and often invisible people of the world.
My respect and awe for Bren soared after I watched the professional documentary that she had written and produced. I was quite excited about the future of our friendship but sadly that was not to be. With heartbreaking suddenness Dr. Bren Ortega Murphy died and I was devastated. I thought about our conversations and our correspondence over and over again and realized how she had accompanied me during the pandemic and the uncertain times. I knew that I would forever cherish our brief moments together.
A few weeks ago an advertisement for a movie called Cabrini appeared on my Facebook feed. I wondered why it had so randomly come there and so I investigated reviews of the film only to read a critique from a Jesuit priest who marveled at how beautifully human the story portrayed the now St. Frances Cabrini. He assured his readers that she was not portrayed as a cloying model of perfection but instead a very real person whose sense of kindness propelled her to fight for her Italian brothers and sisters who were living in squalor in a place where rats were treated better. I knew that I had to go see the movie, so last week my husband and I made the film the centerpiece of our Thursday date night.
I am happy to proclaim that Cabrini is a beautifully rendered film that tells the story of an amazing woman who travelled into uncertainty from her native country of Italy and took on prejudice with courage and determination. Nothing about her mission was easy and yet she found the inner strength to fight for what she believed she needed to do. The movie captures both her gentle nature and her steel hard convictions. It is a worthy offering that resonates even in our modern times. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. it is not so much a religious film as a commentary on our responsibilities as humans living in a sometimes uncertain and cruel world. It reminded of my friend, Bren, and somehow I knew that she would have loved it.
Our nation still struggles to know how to deal with immigrants who come to our country hoping to find better lives for themselves and their families. Many among us continue to stereotype and even shun them. They are all too often viewed as a horde that will destroy the fabric of our nation. Some forget that once the Irish and the Poles and the Jews and the Italians and the Slovakians like my grandparents were feared and mistreated as much as those who come to us today. Cabrini asks us to see the immigrants as people just like us. It tells us the story of a woman who set aside politics and helped them when they were in need. It challenges us to view immigrants from a different perspective just as Bren often challenged me to be my best self.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 