Cabrini It’s clearly a film about the anti-Italian hostility faced by dark-skinned newcomers to the United States in the late 19th century. It tells the story of Sister Frances Xavier Cabrini, a Catholic nun who arrived in Five Points, New York, in 1889 to serve the desperately poor Italian-American community. She also encountered her fair share of bigotry, but the obstacles that repeatedly threatened her efforts came more from City Hall than from ordinary New Yorkers.
With few resources, Cabrini persuaded New York Times But when she used the money to open an orphanage in an upscale area, a law enforcement official forced it to close. Neighbors were also happy to attend the Italian-American festival she organized to raise money for her work, until the evil mayor sent in baton-wielding riot police to disperse and confiscate the proceeds.
When Cabrini scrapes together enough money to begin building a hospital for the immigrant community, a mob (the viewer is invited to assume they are on the city payroll) sets fire to the construction site. The idea that governments are behind the most positive social changes, driven primarily by citizens through force, is vividly overturned in this film.
Mother Cabrini—known today by Catholics as the patron saint of immigrants—embodied the entrepreneurial spirit of the land to which she immigrated. “We are brave or we die,” she says near the end of the film. “That’s how I learned to live in America.”
