About twenty-five minutes from Arvada, there is a 22-foot statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It's the first thing spotted as one drives west on I-70. Most of us that have grown up in Colorado are aware of Mother Cabrini Shrine in our mountains. The shrine is named after an Italian nun, known as Mother Cabrini. We know the story of how she tapped the earth in a place where there was no water, and a stream began flowing. Presently, people will drive to the shrine, fill containers with the "holy" water, visit the newly decorated chapel and gift shop, climb the 373 steps to the huge statue and on the way pray the stations of the cross. At any given time there will be people roaming the peaceful grounds.
I know that it is a special place to take out of town visitors and I have taken people from Mexico, New York, California, New Mexico and many locals to visit the shrine. When I found out that a movie about Mother Cabrini had been made, I purchased four tickets for myself and three friends. The movie opened on March 8, 2024, and we sat in the dark theater waiting for the movie to begin!
The story takes place in Italy, Rome and New York. I knew her story here in Colorado, but I had no idea what she had gone through to help orphans in New York City. The tiny nun arrived with six nuns in 1889 to try to alleviate the problems of the Italian immigrants. She asked a newspaper man to write an article to call attention to the sad plight and the headline was, Rats live better than children. Some people were touched, but the majority treated the Italian immigrant terribly as if they weren't human. Name calling, insults and ignoring them was the norm. Mother Cabrini decided to change their attitude. The movie depicts the filthy children living in sewers and how the few nuns that came from Italy were ready to work hard to change the poverty for the immigrants, especially the Italians. (I found it difficult to believe that children lived in such squalor and how dirty and filthy they were in such surroundings! When I read that some of the scenes were depicted from actual photographs, I had to believe it.) She had to do battle with the church, the mayor, political parties and government. She herself had lungs that were compromised after a near death drowning. Her hacking and coughing even hurt my chest as I listened to it in the modern sound system at the theater! She found two allies, a doctor and the newspaper man, and they helped getting people to listen and to help.
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There must have been a reason why God was never mentioned in the movie, nobody ever knelt and prayed, and she never called on God for help. Maybe, because the movie came out on Women's Day it wanted to portray the strength of women. Her comment at the end when someone says that a man could have done it, she says something like, a woman could do it better!
I was a bit disappointed that our Shrine in Colorado was not shown, and it was all about her fight in New York. She ended up building hospitals, schools, novitiates and orphanages throughout the world and all were staffed by women. She died at 67 and canonized a saint in 1946 as the first American saint. She became a U.S. citizen when she was fifty-nine years old. Seeing her struggles and battles on the screen I understand why she became a saint!
"If the Lord wants me to raise
His children here in West Park,
He will have to bring water."
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
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