Last night I celebrated International Women’s Day and the start of Catholic Sisters Week by seeing the new film, Cabrini, in the theaters with two of my CSJP sisters. It was very well done and inspiring to see the story of such a courageous woman of faith on the big screen.

I was particularly interested because some of the characters in Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini’s story are also characters in the story of Mother Francis Clare (Margaret Anna Cusack), the founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.

Mother Cabrini was dogged in her petition to the Vatican to found an international women’s missionary order. She asked Pope Leo XIII for permission to start in China. He asked her to go to New York to serve Italian immigrants.

I was enthralled to see the depiction of their meeting portrayed, because Mother Clare also went to Rome with a petition to found a new order. From a letter she wrote to the sisters in May 1884:

My own darling Children, I have just returned from my audience, & such a happy audience-only funny being all alone with the Pope! … Fancy the Pope held my hands in his all the time I was talking to him- oh when I tell you all he said how rejoiced you will be my own children please God soon we shall meet. Your own fond mother. M.F.C.

I was less enthralled but rather curious to see how Mother Cabrini got along with the Archbishop of New York. You see, we are in New Jersey because while the German American Bishop Wigger welcomed our ministry to  Irish immigrant women, on the other side of the Hudson the Irish American Archbishop Corrigan refused to even meet with Mother Clare, let alone approve of her mission in his diocese.

This was a few years before he met Mother Cabrini. Watching his political maneuvers and attitude toward a woman seeking to bring the mission of Jesus to meet the signs of the times gave some color to our own founding story and the challenges Mother Clare faced.

To my knowledge, Mother Clare and Mother Cabrini did not know each other. Yet they were of a similar heart and mind. Both women suffered from physical ailments. Both women were on fire with the love of God and God’s people in need. And both women were well versed in navigating the hierarchy of the church to try to meet that need.

In the end of course, their paths differed. Mother Cabrini is now venerated as a Saint in the church.  Mother Clare, personally defeated by the negative campaign of Archbishop Corrigan against her, which eventually led to Bishop Wigger siding with his Irish American brother Bishops and her decision to leave the order in able to save the mission.

May we like Mother Clare and Mother Cabrini read the signs of the time and put the mission first today.