Cabrini 2024

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On Friday, March 8 – “International Women’s Day” – I stepped out into sunshine and felt as if I’d just taken a spiritual shower. My soul tingled as cleansing droplets pelted through. I was refreshed and renewed. I was walking on air. I was ready to cope with the challenges that my life in Paterson presents to me, from the garbage in the streets to the noisy car stereos blasting rap. I resolved to be a better person. And, yes, I felt all of those things because I had just seen Cabrini.

Cabrini is a 2024 biopic of the Italian American nun, Sister Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917). In 1946, Cabrini became the first US citizen to be canonized. Cabrini accomplished this in spite of having been dealt an inauspicious hand in life. Her parents were Italian farmers. She was one of the youngest of many brothers and sisters – sources list between ten and thirteen siblings. Only four of her siblings survived beyond adolescence. Worldwide, youngest daughters of large, agricultural families have low status and relatively low survival rates. On top of that, Cabrini was born two months premature. She was afflicted with smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis, which compromised her lungs for life.

When she was a child, Cabrini made paper boats, outfitted them with violet flowers, and launched them on the water. These were her early, imaginary “missions.” She yearned to preach Christ in China. Because of her physical frailty, three orders of nuns refused to accept her. She founded her own order.

A cardinal dismissed her ambitions, reminding her that there had never been an independent order of missionary women.

Cabrini replied, “If the mission of announcing the lord’s Resurrection to his apostles had been entrusted to Mary Magdalene, it would seem a very good thing to confide to other women an evangelizing mission.”

The pope denied her repeated requests to evangelize China, but, because of her persistent pleas for some foreign mission, the pope sent her to work with Italian immigrants in New York City. There, Cabrini met with overwhelming prejudice, not just from mainstream Americans, but also from Irish church hierarchy.

Writing in L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican City’s daily newspaper, historian Lucetta Scaraffia is brass-tacks frank in her assessment of Cabrini’s remarkable skills, her bold tactics, and her crushing of misogynist restrictions. Scaraffia reminds us that in Cabrini’s lifetime, “in Italy women were not yet recognized as having administrative autonomy.” Even so, Cabrini “and her sisters fearlessly administered large sums of money and decided upon important investments, trusting in their own entrepreneurial skills.” Cabrini “needed money, a lot of money, to build hospitals, schools, and orphanages … for this reason she committed herself to obtaining it in every way imaginable.”

Cabrini was no wide-eyed naif, suited only for the cloister. Cabrini was “a shrewd business person who paid close attention to the details of each institution she founded.” In Chicago, “Cabrini doubted the accuracy of property measurements” she “thought she was being cheated. In the middle of the night, she and her Sisters tied shoestrings together to create a makeshift tape measure … they discovered mistakes, and adjusted the contract, in their favor … Columbus Hospital went on to become a preeminent healthcare institution in Chicago for the next 97 years.”

One method Cabrini used was financial speculation, a method condemned by some Christians as “intrinsically evil.” While she was in Chicago, Cabrini went for a walk outside the city to relieve her breathing difficulties. “She saw with her keen eye that this was land destined to rise in price with urban expansion and ordered it to be purchased immediately, while the price was low.” She also invested in land in Panama before the canal was complete. “When the canal is done,” she wrote, “it will be an enormous price.”

Cabrini didn’t just invest in property that would someday be worth something; she invested in property that had lost its value but could still be exploited. “A nun, who had become a master builder, was in charge of” a needed project in Los Angeles. But there was no money for supplies. “The building material was obtained from the demolition of an amusement park that Cabrini had bought cheaply. The demolition work carried out under her direction was also entrusted to the girls of the orphanage, who were happy to collect nails, locks and hinges in many buckets, and was so successful that the leftover wood and bricks were sent to Denver, where the sisters were building another building.” At a time when there were state laws in the US against women working in mines, Cabrini’s nuns worked a mine in Seattle and she adjured nuns in Brazil to work a gold mine.

Cabrini’s financial skills were not applied to her own lifestyle. She was true to her vow of poverty. Money was a means to an end, saving souls and glorifying God. “I have to work like a young girl,” Cabrini wrote to her sisters. “I have to sustain strong reasons against strong deceitful men and it has to be done; and you be careful, work hard and do not say it is too much or you will never be the woman blessed by the Holy Spirit.”

Cabrini made 23 trans-Atlantic crossings for her work. These crossings are remarkable because when she was seven years old, she almost drowned, and was plagued by fear of water. In fact she narrowly escaped drowning a second time; she had a ticket on the Titanic. Work demands prevented her from boarding the doomed ship.

Cabrini was already 38 when she arrived in America and began the work that would elevate her to sainthood. She arrived not even speaking English. Her work eventually stretched across the United States and to six continents and seventeen countries. Cabrini “established 67 institutions, including schools, hospitals, and orphanages,” according to Cabrini University. The film claims that her philanthropic accomplishments equaled the likes of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller. Doctors told her she’d die at 40; she passed away from malaria at 67. “The very day she died she had been wrapping candy for Christmas gifts for poor children.” “The world is too small for what I intend to do,” Cabrini announced. Cabrini, the movie, honors a luminous powerhouse and inspiration.

I’ve seen Cabrini twice within one week, traveling to theaters and paying for my ticket. Yes, I am a feminist – a dirty word to some. Cabrini is my ideal of a feminist film and Mother Cabrini is my ideal of a feminist heroine. I am grateful for films when the female lead has some role other than eye candy and arm ornament. I appreciated the supportive wives who have small but central roles in The Boys in the Boat. But I really, really love those relatively rare films where a woman on an admirable mission is driving the car, and when she accomplishes her goals not with male tools – karate kicks and exploding cars – but with female tools of negotiation and coalition-building. And, as a Catholic, I can fully inhabit a movie when the heroine accomplishes her goals, as Cabrini did, “through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

I cherish movies that feature women doing good things in a world whose badness comes close to crushing my soul. The Inn of Sixth Happiness, about Gladys Aylward, a Christian missionary who helped end foot binding in China, is a favorite. Man of Marble, and the sequel, Man of Iron, are films that are close to gospel for me. They depict Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda), a Polish journalist, who risks all to expose Communist crimes. Erin Brockovich is a movie I enjoyed once, but never chose to re-watch. In the film, the real-life crusader Brockovich is depicted wearing heavy make-up, a push-up bra, a transparent blouse, a miniskirt, and high-heeled shoes. The message I got was, “If you aren’t marketing yourself first as a sex toy, you can’t accomplish anything of worth.”

Cabrini is a seductively beautiful film. Director Alejandro Monteverde’s accomplishment is all the more stunning given that he depicts slum conditions. Monteverde understands Cabrini’s biography as operatic, and, like opera, Cabrini is over the top at times. It opens with Paolo, an Italian boy in New York City, desperately and futilely attempting to get bigoted American health care providers to minister to his mother, who is dying of typhus. The episode is true to life, as is most of the film, but the soundtrack explodes into another dimension in this opening scene. It took me a while to settle into the soundtrack’s shake-you-by-your-shoulders aesthetic, but I did.

Monteverde’s initial goal was a black-and-white film. He admires Orson Welles’ use of black-and-white. The producers rejected this request, but one can see Monteverde’s intentions. Monteverde shoots many scenes in a manner that reflects cameo jewelry. For example, in one scene (here), a pauper receives a minimalist burial. The scene is encircled by a stone archway, possibly the mouth of a sewer. The film depicts, again, accurately, Italian immigrants in Manhattan’s notorious slum, Five Points, living in sewers. There is a pool of water in the archway; it reflects the figures at the graveside, creating a symmetrical image. On the left stands the petite mother Cabrini. Next to her, in fashionable 1890s’ garb, stands Vittoria, a former prostitute rescued by Cabrini from the violent pimp, Geno. Two men place a body in a grave. Next to them is a wagon and horse. Beautifully composed shots like these and others are one of the reasons I hope to watch Cabrini again and again.

Cristiana Dell’Anna doesn’t resemble the real Cabrini, who was a Northern Italian, and a fair-skinned, blue-eyed blonde. I suspect that the producers chose a dark-haired, tan-skinned, brown-eyed actress because that is the look most associate with Italians. In any case, Dell’Anna gives one of the very best performances I have ever seen in a biopic. She’s every bit as good as Ben Kingsley in Gandhi. Dell’Anna the actress completely disappears into Cabrini. She exudes grace, faith, and grit. Her delicate, expressive features also register pain and frustration as hostile others slam doors in her face – because she is sickly, a woman, an Italian, and helping the poor.

Giancarlo Giannini was so unforgettable as a feral, hyper-sexual, half-naked, Communist shipwreck survivor in 1974’s Swept Away that his appearance as Pope Leo XIII surprised me. Giannini is now 81 years old and I didn’t recognize him till I read the closing credits. He is fantastic in his small role, embodying wisdom, humor, compassion, and appropriate skepticism. Pope Leo XIII was known as the “pope of the workers” for his rejection of both Communism and laissez-fair capitalism, and his championing of the rights of average working men and women.

David Morse is remorselessly sharp as the real Archbishop Michael Corrigan, an Irish-American power player determined not to sacrifice an inch of territory, influence, or precious funds to the despised Italians. The Irish had arrived in America decades before the Italians and flooded New York City. They achieved a toehold in petty power positions of schoolteacher, ward politician, clergy, and police officer. The real Corrigan relegated Italians to the basement of an Irish-dominated church. The Italians were too dirty, smelly and too incapable of making significant donations to worship upstairs with the superior Irish.

John Lithgow is deliciously wicked as a composite character, a New York City mayor who despises Italians and refuses to be intimated by a mere woman. Cabrini and Mayor Gould share only one scene; that is a shame. I would love to see these two excellent actors and these two intriguing characters in a two-hander. They both build their lives around an uncompromising pursuit of raw power. One person’s power ideal is selfish, bullying, and temporal; the other’s is selfless, nurturing, and divine. I’d love to hear their debates, and also their deal-making, using each other to achieve their respective ends.

Having said that I loved this film, I must confess that I recognize that it is not for everyone. After seeing it once myself, I dragged a male movie-goer with me. As the final credits rolled, I pounced. “How did you like it?”

“It was … fine,” he said, with the passion of a limp washcloth. “You know what would improve this movie?” he asked.

“What?” I asked.

“A car chase,” he said. “Or maybe Cabrini could pull a .457 magnum and stick it in the pimp’s face, and say,” and my companion imitated Cabrini’s Italian accent, “Gowa on. Maka maya Deus.”

On a more serious note, my companion said, “The story was compelling – a strong story of David versus many Goliaths. Good actors. Good costumes and set … You see lots of bad men, one token good male, and all women are good or, at worst, quiet.”

My friend’s assessment is not accurate. There are quite a few positive male characters in Cabrini, and the nurse who refuses to admit Paolo’s dying mother is a woman. But, yes, audiences who don’t like woman-centered films will not like Cabrini.

There are other reasons some are having trouble with Cabrini the movie, just as some had trouble with Cabrini, the woman. Those protesting the film include not a few Catholics.

Natalia Winkelman, in her New York Times review, describes a very different film than the one I saw. Winkelman, in the second sentence of her review, immediately smeared Cabrini by associating it with “conservative” filmmakers. One wonders how many New York Times film reviews begin with a disparaging remark about “liberal” filmmakers. Winkelman calls the film a “cluttered,” “pious,” “sanctimonious,” “stodgy,” “repetitive” “tale” full of “gauzy goodness” that “repels controversy.” Winkelman’s adjective, pious, is defined as “making a hypocritical display of virtue.” There is nothing “pious,” in this sense, in Cabrini.

Winkelman is not always so harsh. Winkelman liked a “stirring” film about an Iranian woman, a “slyly charming” film about a poor Hispanic woman, and a “character study” of a “traumatized Liberian woman.” A film about a schizophrenic woman “brims with genuine feeling.” Winkelman diagnoses 2023 as a “Crybaby Year for Men in the Movies.” “In 2023, male characters pouted elaborately after something they saw as their birthright was put in check.”

What explains the disconnect between viewers like me, who enjoyed Cabrini, and reviewers like Natalia Winkelman, who doesn’t like the film’s “conservative” filmmakers? A brief foray into a 2019 New York City minor scandal illuminates the matter.

In 2018, the New York Times published “Rebel Women Are Coming to a Public Monument Near You” by Maya Salam. Salam had previously reported for the Times about being “terrorized ruthlessly” by her fellow schoolchildren in Kentucky because she was born in Lebanon into a Muslim family. Salam was transformed, she says, by nihilistic rock music. Her transformation is worth lingering on in a review of Cabrini.

Salam grew up feeling that she must obey these immigrant rules: “Don’t stand out, but don’t fit in.” She was a “a sad girl paralyzed with anxiety.” Salam found salvation in The Downward Spiral, “a bleak concept album” by the band Nine Inch Nails. One of the Columbine shooters was also a fan of The Downward Spiral. One critic summarizes The Downward Spiral. It tells the “story of a misanthropic man who rebels against humanity, kills God and then eventually attempts suicide.”

Maya Salam, unhappy immigrant child – like those Cabrini once took under her wing – was transformed by a song “about a man spiraling toward suicide, packed with explicitly sexual and violent lyrics.” This song gave Salam what she most craved, a sense of “control.” “That grinding, banging, cranking scream of industrial sounds transformed my shame to rage … By existing as an Arab in America and a gay person, I am inherently an outsider … outside … is good … as we all navigate this new era of transformation and bid farewell to a norm that was unwelcoming.”

Compare immigrant woman Salam’s approach to salvation to immigrant woman Cabrini’s. Cabrini taught her orphans to cherish their heritage, but to assimilate to the best in America. She told them not just to receive, but also to give. She demanded hard work. Her wards dug wells and gathered construction materials. She and they confronted prejudice, but she taught them that God loved them, and that they, in turn, should love others.

Salam’s confusion and pain in the face of human cruelty, her celebration of a rejection of normalcy, her experience of graphically violent and sexual commercial media as salvific, her estimation of a sense of control and the primacy of her own desires as the highest good, and her assumption that that path will work for all, is as good a summation as many as a key to understanding the currently dominant aesthetic. That aesthetic values the “cool” – Salam’s word.

In her 2018 piece “Rebel Women Are Coming to a Public Monument Near You,” Salam covered the “Rebel Women” exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. “On display were biographies, prints and photographs of about 15 of the city’s most rebellious women.” Salam observed that “In the United States, there are about 5,200 public statues depicting historical figures … fewer than 400 … are of women.” Salam mentions a then-new program to remedy the statue gender gap. “She Built NYC” would erect statues to prominent women.

The NYC Cultural Affairs’ webpage for She Built NYC describes the effort. “First Lady Chirlane McCray … announced She Built NYC, a new effort to commission a public monument or artwork that honors women’s history in New York City … members of the public submitted nearly 2,000 nominations of women … As a result of this process, She Built NYC is commissioning public art works to honor” selected women.

Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman elected to congress. Billie Holiday, also black, famously sang, “Strange Fruit,” a protest against lynching. Elizabeth Jennings Graham was a black woman who, in 1854, refused a racist request to leave a street car. Dr. Helen Rodriguez Trias was the first Latina president of the American Public Health association. Marsha P. Johnson was a black man, and Sylvia Rivera was an Hispanic man. Both identified as women. Katherine Walker was a German-born keeper of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse. One can’t help but notice that there is only one white woman in the group of seven.

Citizens had been invited to vote on the woman to be honored with a statue. The highest vote-getter was Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. “NYC’s First Lady Snubs Mother Cabrini,” reported The Tablet, a publication of the Diocese of Brooklyn. “Chirlane McCray is facing backlash after ignoring public calls for a monument to be built in honor of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini … The new monuments will be built using about $5 million in taxpayer funds.” McCray is black, and once identified as a lesbian. She later married Bill de Blasio, former mayor of New York City. De Blasio, in 1990, self-identified as supportive of “democratic socialism.”

Councilman Justin Brannan (D) protested. “The will of the people was denied. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, who received more nominations from New Yorkers than any other … has been completely ignored … why open this up for a public vote and then ignore the results? I would hate to see a wonderful campaign undermined by a process that tries to appear to value public opinion without actually doing so.” Emphasis added. I add that emphasis because engineering a process to make it appear democratic, but really installing the wishes of a powerful few, is a notorious political game of the power-hungry. “Dorothy Day, another prominent Catholic and a native of Staten Island, also wasn’t chosen. She received the eighth most votes,” the Tablet reported.

Why did the Museum of the City of New York choose to celebrate women by selecting only “rebel” women who “defied Victorianism” and “middle class morality” and “pushed the envelope”? Why did the museum exhibit celebrate Helen Jewett, a prostitute? Would an exhibit celebrating worthy men choose only men who were “rebels,” or would it, rather, choose men known for high achievements? Would such an exhibit choose to celebrate a male prostitute? If so, why?

Why did McCray select two men who self-identified as women while rejecting the top vote-getter, a Catholic saint? Why did Natalia Winkelman, who previously championed movies about Iranian, Liberian, and schizophrenic women, bash a movie about one of the most admirable, productive, and determined women who ever lived, that is Cabrini? Why did Maya Salam find salvation in a song about suicide? Here’s my best guess. And, yes, I am going to make some sweeping generalizations here.

After rejecting the Judeo-Christian foundations of Western Civilization, the Left embraced a different ethic and aesthetic. In the Old Testament, God says, “I place before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live.” In the New Testament Jesus says, “I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” The Bible champions human, corporal, life. This is in contrast to the East, which promises transcendence of the human state, and Islam whose followers have been insisting since Khalid ibn Al-Walid in 636 AD, “We love death more than you love life.”

Marx said, “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” Stalin said, “Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem,” “Obsolete classes do not voluntarily abandon the stage of history,” and “How many divisions has the pope?” These quotes reflect the Communist emphasis on violent destruction of perceived wrongs, and suggest a lack of success of achieving a post-revolutionary “workers’ paradise.”

With the partial or total abandonment of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a new ethos fills the vacuum. In this ethos, the goal is personal power and personal desire as the highest good. The sacraments escorting the seeker to that highest good are art that celebrates destruction, rather than creation; an example of this is Salam’s celebration of a song about suicide. Normalcy is viewed as an oppressive enemy that needs to be destroyed. Heroes are those who engage in that destruction. The use of art as a weapon in the war against normalcy itself is covered by Chris Rufo here.

No doubt the seven men and women honored by She Built NYC created much. But they were not chosen for creation. They were chosen for their perceived defiance, outsiderhood, and destruction. Non-whites were chosen because they are seen as less “normal” than whites. A black woman like Condoleezza Rice, who excelled at normal achievements – statecraft, concert-quality piano playing, competitive skating, multilingualism, public service – would never be chosen for this project. She’s too normal, too much a creator and nurturer, not a destroyer.

Destruction is often necessary; we all destroy, when we clean out the fridge and when we debride a wound. But the new value system elevates destruction of normalcy so much that creation is denigrated. The lighthouse keeper, the one white woman chosen for She Built NYC, is celebrated for destroying “patriarchy.” The black women can be perceived as destroying white supremacy. The male “heroines” represent the destruction of normal human sex. Billie Holiday was a widely admired, commercially and critically successful singer who succumbed to heroin, alcohol, and relationships with abusive men. She died of cirrhosis when she was 44. She destroyed herself. Later there would be the “27 Club” of other self-destroyers like Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, celebrated for their self-destruction.

Cabrini, like any hero or heroine, defied evil and obstacles. She defied oppression, misogyny, xenophobia, and, given her frailty, Cabrini defied the Grim Reaper himself. She witnessed the horrific mistreatment, exploitation, and pathological racist hatred against the Eastern and Southern European “New Immigrants” of 1880-1924. I suspect that many viewers will think that Cabrini the film overstates the destitution and racism New Immigrants faced. It does not. I’ve published scholarly work on that era and if anything the immigrants faced conditions much worse than the film depicts. The largest mass lynching in American history was of Italians. Poles and other New Immigrants were massacred in Lattimer, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Mass market publications, including the New York Times, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Atlantic published anti-immigrant material so hateful that it came close to making this reader physically ill. At one point in the film, a priest says to Cabrini of three people Cabrini knows, “An orphan shot a pimp to protect a whore. This place will eat you alive.”

Five Points, setting of director Martin Scorcese’s violent, male-driven, fight-fest film Gangs of New York, did not eat Cabrini alive. She did not become suicidal. She did not wallow. She kept her eyes on the prize – her Christian faith and values.

Cabrini didn’t defy these forces and individuals to advance her own ego. She wasn’t focused on sating her own appetites. And she didn’t want to leave any battle with her opponent face down on the boxing ring canvas. Rather, she extended an invitation. “You’re on the wrong team. Join me on the team of love and service. It will be better for you.” In the film, this approach is dramatized in her conversation with Mayor Gould.

Cabrini was not known for defiance or destruction. She was known for creation. She was known for elevating her fellow humans from degraded lives to lives of normalcy. She nurtured rather than sneered at her fellow humans. She was known for building, rather than tearing down. She was known for service to others, rather than advancing or indulging herself and her own appetites. Her path to creation was not nihilistic art and the craving for power and to be cool, but love and the teachings and institutional structure of the Catholic Church. That’s why Chirlane McCray had to reject Cabrini the woman. And that’s the problem that many viewers, but not all, have with Cabrini the movie. Cabrini the work of art is about as far as you can get from a nihilistic, narcissistic rock song that flatters the aesthetic of a self-indulgent, self-absorbed, self-pitying teen ego.

I wish I could report that all of my fellow Catholics recognize Cabrini for the masterpiece that it is, but they don’t. Many Catholics laud and embrace the film. Some do not. I have read reviews by priests and anti-feminist women who are enraged that Cabrini has “feminist” overtones. I stumbled across a YouTube video of a woman in prominent make-up, lots of hair gel, wearing a silk blouse with a v-neckline. She has a problem with Cabrini because she is convinced that a Christian woman wears overtly “feminine” attire and stays at home and mothers children. A powerhouse, childless nun in all black gear apparently violates this lady’s (she prefers the word “lady” to “woman”) understanding of the Bible. Misogyny like this, under the cloak of Christianity, utterly astounds me, but it’s out there and it’s part of the mix, just as Archbishop Corrigan, relegating “smelly” Italians to the basement, is also an unavoidable part of our tradition.

One priest was infuriated that the film depicts a prostitute. He wants to know why the prostitute is never shown, as he puts it, repenting of her sins. I emailed the priest privately. The sexual exploitation of New Immigrant children was a major feature of that immigration. It was called “white slavery.” Desperate children were violently forced to service the most anti-human appetites. These victims often died young. Vittoria, in the film, reports that she was forced into prostitution as a child, she hates her life, would like to escape from her violent pimp, and she feels filthy. Her pimp, Geno, attempts to kill her when she leaves the brothel. None of this was enough to engender compassion in the critical priest. I hope he rereads John 7:53-8:11.

Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.