"We are bold or we die"

"Cabrini" builds an empire of hope at the box office

Maria Francesca Cabrini (an inspired Cristiana Dell’Anna) may not be a household name, but the excellent new biopic about her could easily change things. After all, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the order she founded, ministers today in fifteen countries on six continents.

Directed by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde, “Cabrini” also has a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, not too shabby for the patron saint of immigrants. As an Italian immigrant herself, Mother Cabrini knew full well how hard assimilation could be. She had planned to begin her work in China, then branch out. However, Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) advised her to start in the West, then go East.

She and her religious sisters landed in New York in March 1889. They were appalled to see the plight of so many poor immigrant Italian children: sick, orphaned, exploited, and afraid, like a ring of hell from Dante’s “Inferno.”

After many attempts to secure adequate living conditions for these children, she first had to relocate them from rat-infested spaces and overcrowded quarters. Cabrini learned to disrupt, negotiate, and repeat. First she dealt with Archbishop Michael Corrigan (David Morse), whom the Vatican rebuked for neglecting the spiritual needs of Italian immigrants.

Cabrini also navigated various NYC mayoralties. These are well consolidated here by the fictional Mayor Gould, played gamely by John Lithgow.

The film itself comes at an inauspicious time in world history as far as immigrants are concerned. This is all the more reason to see “Cabrini” when you can.

Likewise, given her legacy creating hospitals and orphanages, the film also arrives at a particular moment as far as these places go, too. If you stomached “20 Days in Mariupol,” you know what I mean. If you’re even remotely following what’s happening in Gaza, I rest my case.

I’ve long admired Mother Cabrini for her activism and her zeal. Of course, I also embrace the fact she was the first US citizen canonized a saint. Impressive, given her arrival in 1889 as an immigrant and later becoming an American citizen in 1909.

Honestly, we ought to be a whole lot nicer to immigrants whenever and wherever we encounter them, regardless of their official immigration status. Perhaps “Cabrini” the movie will move us in this direction. It ought to, based on one scene especially: the one where she tells the Pope, “We are bold or we die. That is how I learned to live in America.”

Thank God for Saint Cabrini, whose empire of hope we so desperately need now more than ever.