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202 • Part II. The Sacraments: The Faith Celebrated

as Jewish and Protestant.The hospital had free wards for the poor and pri-

vate rooms for the rich,whose fees helped finance the care of the poor. She

built other Columbus hospitals in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle,

New Orleans, and Chicago.

She continued to visit the various convents and institutions she

founded in Europe. She also sailed to Brazil and Argentina to expand the

work of her community. Her thirty-seven years of apostolic service saw her

almost constantly on the move. She could be found deep in a Denver

mine encouraging Italian American miners or, on another occasion, at a

scaffold holding hands and praying with Italian American prisoners who

were about to be hanged.

When she died in 1917, she left behind sixty-seven convents in Europe,

the United States, and South America and 1,500 Missionary Sisters of the

Sacred Heart. She had become a citizen of the United States in 1909 and

was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. At her canonization

in 1946, Pius XII said this in his homily:

Wheredid sheacquireall that strengthand the inexhaustibleenergy

by which she was able to perform so many good works and to sur-

mount so many difficulties? She accomplished all this through the

faith that was always so vibrant in her heart; through the divine love

that burned within her; and, finally, through the constant prayer by

which she was so closely united to God. . . . She never let anything

turn her aside from striving to please God and to work for his glory

for which nothing, aided by grace, seemed too difficult or beyond

human strength. (

Liturgy of the Hours

, vol. IV, 2022)

Mother Cabrini lived deeply the mission of the Church to bring Christ’s

compassion and care to all people. She responded generously to the

grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation that binds Christians to such a

deeper identification with the Church and her mission.