Donald Trump celebrated Francesca Cabrini, a “woman of boundless faith and limitless charity, a towering Italian American hero, and the first American citizen ever proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church.”
The USA stands out historically since, from its very foundation, it enshrined religious freedom, encouraging people of all religions — though most especially Christianity and Judaism — to live together and respect each other. President Donald Trump is a nondenominational Christian, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are Catholic, and the Trump administration has Jews, Hindus, and other Christians and Catholics in its ranks. Honoring the contributions that Catholic immigrants have made to America over the centuries, Trump issued a special proclamation on July 15 for the anniversary of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini’s 1850 birth.
The first American-born Catholic saint is Elizabeth Ann Seton, but as we are also unique in being a country where being American is not dependent on race or ethnicity, legal immigrants to our shores are also fully Americans. Frances Xavier Cabrini was born and raised in Italy, but she later became a United States citizen, the first American whom the Catholic Church honored with the title of “saint.”
Trump glanced briefly over Cabrini’s adventurous life. “From a young age in Northern Italy, Francesca Cabrini already knew that God was calling her to a life of service as a missionary. After founding the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she answered the call to go ‘not to the East, but to the West,’ where she ministered to Italian immigrants who worked to build new lives in America while remaining steadfast in their faith,” the president explained.
Cabrini came to New York City in 1889 “with nothing but their unshakable faith in Almighty God,” Trump went on. Even before she became a citizen, Cabrini was already giving back to her new country in many ways. “Mother Cabrini and her sisters opened hospitals, orphanages, and schools that comforted the sick, cared for children, and provided for the weary. Mother Cabrini’s work rekindled the faith of thousands of Catholics and prepared generations to flourish as proud Americans,” Trump noted.
Cabrini, Trump lauded her, “met every challenge and hardship with an inexhaustible zeal, and through her tireless devotion, she opened 67 charitable institutions across the world. Today, the legacy Mother Cabrini began continues through the work of the Missionary Sisters and through the Italian American community whose deep devotion to faith and family enriches our Nation.”
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When she became American, Cabrini cherished the freedoms and rights guaranteed under the Constitution, Trump emphasized. “Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini cherished America as her beloved home and revered with all her heart the beauty, freedoms, and liberties that make our Nation exceptional,” he wrote. “Her tireless pursuit of the common good, her unceasing devotion to Jesus Christ, and her measureless generosity embody the very virtues that have made America the greatest force for good the world has ever known.”
Pope Pius XII canonized Cabrini in 1946. Her legacy continues to inspire believers to this day, and Trump urged Americans to “pledge to safeguard the precious freedoms she cherished so deeply, to usher in a historic resurgence of faith across our land, and to steward the full glory of the American promise for generations to come.” Amen.
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