The Prologue to Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Frances Cabrini

Editor’s note: The following is the Prologue to Too Small a World: The Life of Mother Frances Cabrini, Theodore Maynard’s landmark 1945 biography, which is being republished by Ignatius Press. The book is currently available for pre-order and will be released on March 6th.

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Prologue

The last day of March 1889 was one of dull gloom. The ship as it came into the harbor of New York might have met gusty weather or snow or even a high, gleaming sky. Instead, there was nothing but a thin rain turning into fog. March was not going out either as a lion or a lamb. Perhaps it was like a jellyfish—cold, damp, inert, with a sting hidden somewhere.

The fifteen hundred immigrants—mostly Italians—crowded into the steerage quarters of the Bourgogne could not have enjoyed the eight days of their voyage from Le Havre even had the weather been better or the ship more comfortable. For most of them, the bare thought of the sea had had such terrors that they were ill from the moment they left the wharf. Some of them had become seasick as soon as they put foot on the as yet steady deck. Not least was this true of the seven young nuns who had left their quiet convent in Lombardy to work among the neglected Italians of New York. Of one alone was it not true. That one was not only the leader of the band but no less a personage than the General and foundress of a new religious congregation.

She was even more of a personage than that. By becoming naturalized as a citizen of the United States, she was to be the first American to be canonized. Her name was Francesca Cabrini.

To her name she had added, because of the missionary enthusiasm that had possessed her since she was a child, the distinctive name of Xavier, Italianized as Saverio. Now that her ambition was about to be fulfilled and her life-work begun, her heart soared. For her even those dreary skies were gilded.

Since early morning she had been on deck trying to make out what she could of the low shores of Long Island. A few of her companions had been courageous enough to crawl out of the berths where they had huddled in misery all the way across the dreadful Atlantic. Even to see dry land might be a restorative. As they could see very little that foggy morning, they soon wanted to crawl back into their berths. There they pulled the blankets over their heads again and said the rosary. It would be time enough to get up when the ship berthed by its pier.

One of them stayed by Mother Cabrini, her affection overcoming her strong desire to lie down. To cheer her, Francesca cried, “Ah see! That beautiful gull. Don’t you think it’s like our guardian angel coming to look after us?”

The poor Sister smiled wanly and shook her head. She was too miserable to see anything like that. “No, Mother,” she confessed, “To me, when coming out of the fog, it looks more like a ghost. Or perhaps . . .”

“Perhaps like what, Sister?”

“Worse than a ghost—a lost soul or a devil.”

Francesca took a swift look at the young nun’s white face. “Sister,” she said, “you are not feeling well. Hadn’t you better go to the cabin with the others?”

• • •

The tiny fragile-looking woman—she seemed hardly more than a little girl dressed as a nun, though she was nearing forty—was left alone on deck, staring out into the fog. There she remained all that day, except when she went to the dining-saloon or the Sisters’ cabins. The young nuns, her daughters, still had to have their spirits kept up, for though the long-drawn- out fog-horn above their heads, and the answering hoots, were an assurance that they were really about to land soon, they were also rather frightening.

On deck, Francesca Cabrini stood trying to make out through the misty greyness anything that would indicate New York. But the boat went slowly, with several stops, and it was late in the afternoon before it slipped with a muffled bump or two beside its pier.

There had been little enough to see. An officer had stood beside Francesca a moment or two, and she had asked him in French, “Where is this famous Statue of Liberty?” It had been completed only a year or two before and was talked about more then than now.

His hand pointed in the direction. “Over there, Mother.”

“But I cannot see it.”

“No, you won’t see it today.”

The still more famous skyline of New York—famous even fifty years ago—was hardly to be made out at all. The large innocent blue eyes could not see much, though they were avid to see everything. Until she had founded her institute, it had been her habit to keep her eyes lowered, even though her head was always held erect, for Francesca was by nature a shy and retiring person. But for the last ten years or so, she had had to change all this: as General, she soon learned that she had to keep her eyes very wide open indeed.

It was a pity that she could put them to such very little use now. Here in New York, after all, was to be the start of her work. But though she could see so little, her long, firm, smiling mouth moved in a continuous prayer of thanks that she had at last arrived.

• • •

Yet her coming to New York involved the renunciation of a dream. As a child, she had wanted to go as a missionary to China, and China had been in her mind when she founded her Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. When Bishop Scalabrini of Piacenza had first suggested that she go instead to work among the poor Italian immigrants of New York, she had told him, “But New York is too small a place for me.”

He had smiled at that. “Well, what about the United States, Mother Cabrini? You ought to find it large enough.”

She in turn had smiled. “No, Monsignor. For me the whole world is too small.”

Not until she had knelt before Pope Leo XIII and had unfolded her ambitions to him was her destiny fixed. The old man in the white robe and the scarlet cape edged with white fur put his hand on her head. She looked up at his face—at once rugged and sensitive—and he said very gently, “Not to the East, my daughter, but to the West.”

After that, there was no hesitation. Commissioned by the pope himself, her work could not fail. It was he who had paid her fare and the fares of the six nuns she had brought with her. They were certainly better off than the two Little Sisters of the Poor whom they had discovered in the steerage. On their behalf, Francesca had spoken to the captain—she was always bold enough when it was a question of asking something for other people—and they had been transferred to the cabin section. There they had joined her own Sisters when they sang the Ave Maris Stella at evening, on such evenings as any of them felt well enough to come on deck. Had it not been for the pope’s generosity, Francesca would have had to go steerage herself.

The most precious thing in the scanty baggage in her cabin was a packet of letters introducing her to the American bishops. The principal document was one drawn up by young Monsignor Giacomo Della Chiesa, who was to be her lifelong friend and eventually pope as Benedict XV. It was signed by Cardinal Simeoni, the prefect of Propaganda. She could hardly have had more impressive credentials. Even so, the work she had undertaken would have dismayed anybody but herself. For though Archbishop Corrigan had invited her to New York to work among the Italians, and she had been given to understand that a convent was ready for their reception, she had no money, and she was invading the land of the fabulous dollar. Moreover, she knew hardly a word of English. Against the strenuous Americans she had nothing to pit except her faith in God and the strenuousness that, somewhat to her surprise, she was already beginning to discover in herself. At her capacity for work and her confident courage the Americans themselves were soon to gasp.

She felt these qualities rising in herself as something new, called forth by the new situation she had to meet. That she was going to grapple with difficulties uplifted her, strengthened her. It was out of obedience to the pope that she was going forward. But she knew that she would need all the strength she could muster. It was a small thing to have carried her six nuns across the ocean, almost literally on her own tiny back. They—good, honest girls from inland Lombardy—would, she was sure, be all right as soon as they felt the earth solid again under their feet. Perhaps it was fortunate for them that their seasickness disabled them from thinking about anything except their misery. They were all so accustomed to depend on her, confident that Mother would manage everything well. The difficulties she saw ahead had not so much as occurred to them. Their great comfort that day was that they would sleep that night in their own convent in New York.

• • •

It was late in the afternoon that they got off the ship, and it was seven o’clock before their trunks and baggage received the chalk marks of the customs-inspector, little though there was to inspect. Father Morelli and another of the priests of the Congregation of Saint Charles Borromeo—the order her friend Bishop Scalabrini had founded to work among the Italian immigrants—met her at the pier and acted as interpreters. The Irish inspector passed her quickly with a “Say a prayer for me, Sister.” Father Morelli explained what he had said, and she smiled her eager, “Si! Si!” The good Irishman seemed to understand.

The nuns were at once carried off by the two priests to their rectory of Saint Joachim’s Church at 26 Roosevelt Street. That was where their rectory was to be; while it was being got ready for occupancy, they were living in hired rooms nearby. But at least there was a real Italian dinner once more. How good it tasted! It helped to revive the Sisters, who had had so little to eat on the voyage. But their seasickness had been as much psychological as physical. Healthy young women, they were now hungry for food, and they ate heartily and thankfully.

Yet Francesca had a feeling all through dinner that these priests were ill at ease about something. Their welcome was cordial, and they were obviously delighted to have with them the nuns about whom Bishop Scalabrini had written; but their bursts of vivacious conversation, followed as they were by intervals of awkward silence, were slightly disturbing.

Francesca soon found out why. Almost the moment that the meal was over she said, “I am sure you Fathers will not mind if we don’t stay any longer. The Sisters are very tired. If you will now be so good as to take us to our convent . . .”

There came a moment of silence that was more than awkward. Then Father Morelli, shrugging his shoulders and using eloquent hands, murmured, “Of course, Mother—your convent . . .” His voice trailed away into silence. It was his companion who had to come to the rescue, stammering lamely: “It is not our fault, Mother Cabrini; it really is not our fault.”

Francesca looked at him in surprise. “What is not your fault?”

The shoulders and hands were eloquent again with embarrassment. Father Morelli had to explain. “Well, Mother, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the fact is that there is no convent.”

The faces of the poor nuns went white with dismay. “No convent!” exclaimed Francesca. “But I was told that one was ready.”

“There will be, perhaps later. The archbishop . . . difficulties. It would take too long to tell. You will see the archbishop tomorrow. It is not our fault.”

There was clearly no use in discussing the matter further just then, and the Fathers appeared to know nothing except the appalling bare fact. They could give no idea as to whether or not a house had been taken as a convent or (supposing this had happened) when it would be ready.

“But what are we to do for tonight?” Francesca asked.

Father Morelli vaguely suggested a hotel.

In 1889 the telephone existed, but very few people possessed one. The Fathers did not. There was therefore no way of getting rapidly into communication with hotels. For that matter, the money in Mother Cabrini’s purse was so little that she shuddered at the idea of a hotel bill for even one night.

That gave Father Morelli a solution, of a kind. “We might find”, he said, “a rooming house not very far away. Would that do?”

“Perfectly”, Francesca agreed. “Tomorrow I will see Archbishop Corrigan. There must be some mistake. For one night missionary nuns can surely put up with a rooming house. If it is near here, so much the better. The Sisters want to go to bed.”

• • •

The rooming house was in the first of the many Little Italies Francesca was to see in the United States. That made it seem an appropriate place for her. She even thought that further appropriateness came from the circumstance that it was on the edge of Chinatown. They would at least see Chinamen, even though they had been unable to go to China as missionaries. The group of nuns accepted the rooms willingly, without even bothering to inspect them first. Sleep was what they needed at the moment.

When they got into their rooms, they soon discovered that sleep was about the last thing they were likely to obtain there. In the early days of the institute, they had often had to sleep on straw, like troopers, not finding it uncomfortable. But in these rooms, they could not bring themselves to stretch out on the naked boards of the floors, so horrible was the filth.

One of the nuns turned down a blanket and screamed, “Ah! Look at that—see they’re crawling!”

Francesca looked. “I see”, she said, drawing back dismayed. Dirt was bad enough, but this . . .! The stinking sheets and blankets were alive with bedbugs. The convents from which they had come were bare enough, but immaculately clean. Poverty was one thing; this was another.

All the same she found an encouraging word for them, “My daughters,” she said, “we are missionaries, and missionaries must be prepared for mishaps of this sort. It is a sign that God is going to bless us.”

To get into the foul beds was out of the question. Yet so tired were they that, sitting in chairs and resting their heads on the table or against the wall, they snatched cat-naps, waking every now and then with a jerk to imagine that vermin were crawling all over them. Nor was this quite imaginary. Mice scuttered across the room in the darkness and a few bedbugs crawled up to them. Martyrdom would have been easier to endure by Italians accustomed to sticking mattresses and bed-coverings every morning through the open window for a thorough airing.

Francesca made no attempt to sleep, though she urged the Sisters to get what sleep they could. She had a special fastidiousness, and for mice she had her full share of feminine terror. Leaning against the head of one of the beds, she prayed all night.

In spite of everything, she felt a strange kind of joy. Already she had discovered by experience that difficulties and discouragements at the outset showed that success was to follow. It was not for her to say what sort of trial God should send; that this was of an unexpected variety did not disturb her confidence in the divine love. As the day that was to come would be sure to bring another trial—for what Father Morelli had said showed that something had gone wrong—all the more she needed the fortification of prayer. In what seemed a quiet, lucid dream, she stood all that night, leaning not so much against the bed as on the bosom of God.

• • •

Francesca and her nuns after their terrible night in the rooming house went very early to Mass and Communion at the Italian church on Centre Street. It had been a warehouse, and it still looked rather like one. But there they received the Bread of Heaven for which they felt all the more famished because of the long fast they had suffered during their voyage. With special fervor they received it, praying for a favorable outcome of their interview with the archbishop. That same morning, with the two Scalabriniani Fathers accompanying them, they called at the archbishop’s house on Madison Avenue.

Michael Augustine Corrigan, though still only fifty, had been a bishop for sixteen years, first at Newark, where he was born, then as coadjutor to Cardinal McCloskey, before succeeding him in New York. He was a kindly man, and one who smiled a good deal. He smiled more than was necessary, because by doing so he could hide a slight malformation on one side of his mouth. This made him look somewhat sleek, and those who did not like him found for him the name of “Smiling Mickey”.

When Francesca and the Sisters called on him, he did not smile at all at first. He was greatly surprised and a little annoyed to see them there. To one of the Sisters present, who many years later wrote her impressions of that interview, he seemed decidedly cold—massima freddezza was the phrase she used—though this probably was nothing more than the reserve of a man taken aback. To women in their predicament, with their sensitiveness sharpened by anxiety, anything less than effusive cordiality naturally seemed frigid.

At once he asked, “But did you not get my letter asking you not to come just yet?”

“No, Your Excellency”, Francesca said. “No such letter reached me. It must have crossed the Atlantic while we were on our way. Bishop Scalabrini told me that everything was ready; and I find that nothing is.”

The archbishop explained further. “But Mother, I did not know you would come so soon. You wrote to me in February to say that you might come in May.”

“Or before, I think I said”, she corrected him.

“Well, yes, I believe you did, now that you mention it. Even so, I had not counted on your getting here the last day of March. I see, Mother, that you must be one of those rare people whose performances outrun their promises.”

At this this group of nuns, who had been very anxious in looks, for the first time allowed themselves a wan, half-hearted smile. On such occasions, sisters are accustomed to leave the conversation to their superior; had they spoken they could have answered for Francesca, “Our Mother is just that, Your Excellency. She moves like a flash of lightning.”

The archbishop this time did not find it necessary to smile deliberately. But his smile was no more than a flicker, and it passed quickly; then he looked grave again. However it had happened, he was sorry for the misunderstanding—more than ever sorry when he looked at the circle of tired, pale, timid faces. But he saw also that Francesca’s face shone with intensity and determination and that her eyes flashed whenever she spoke. He had already set her down in his mind as somebody very exceptional.

There was at least one advantage Francesca had in speaking with him; he had made his theological studies in Rome and so knew Italian. He needed it now, for he saw that it was necessary to make himself painfully plain.

At last he came to the point. “The situation”, he told her, “is such that frankly I do not believe you can work to any profit here. It’s most unfortunate that you’ve come. Now the best advice I can give you is that you and the rest of the Sisters get on the same ship by which you came and go back to Europe.”

He was not meaning to be brutal. But he saw no use in not telling her just what he thought.

The group of nuns whitened at the words. Had they made that dreadful journey all for nothing? Were they now, just when they thought it was all over, to endure another such week on the sea? The mere prospect of it made them feel seasick again.

They need not have been alarmed. They had a redoubtable Mother to protect them. In her little high-pitched decisive voice, Francesca answered the archbishop.

“No, Your Excellency,” she said, shaking her head slowly, “No. We cannot do that. I came to New York under obedience to the Holy Father. Here I shall remain.”

The archbishop looked at her sharply. If this was so, it put a different aspect on everything. He could see that the diminutive nun before him was not intending the slightest disrespect, and he admired her courage. But he also knew that people sometimes imagine themselves to have authorizations which they do not actually possess—and especially so in ecclesiastical matters. He asked mildly: “I suppose you have some letters to show in proof of this.”

She had. She laid her bundle of letters on the table before him. A glance at them showed what she said was correct. One of them, that signed by Cardinal Simeoni, the prefect of Propaganda, said that she had come “by order of this Sacred Congregation”, which meant by order of the pope himself. In face of that not even the archbishop of New York could do anything. He saw that he would have to let her stay.

He found himself beginning to want to let her stay. Like so many people who looked into Francesca’s large candid eyes, with their gleam of fire, he was suspecting that here was somebody who could not easily be refused. Her ardor impressed him. So did her calm determination.

Rising he said, “Well, of course, I cannot allow you to have another night like the last. I understood that Father Morelli was getting a place ready for you on Roosevelt Street. You must have taken him by surprise, too. Later on I shall need to explain things to you more in detail. But for the present I shall have to get you settled somewhere. If you will come with me . . .”

He put on his high silk hat and led them one block up Madison Avenue. On the comer of Fifty-First Street, in the red brick building afterward occupied by Cathedral College, there was then a convent of the Sisters of Charity, the branch that had become diocesan. They conducted an orphanage, and their warm-hearted Irish superior, Mother Mary Martha, took instant pity on the homeless Italians.

“Why, of course, Monsignor,” she said, “of course they may stay here. They will be very welcome.”

• • •

The explanation of the archbishop’s attitude came out within the next day or two. Father Morelli, for one, had a great deal to say. “The archbishop,” he told Francesca, “like all the American bishops, wants to do something for the Italians, but a good many of the clergy share the general prejudice against us. And our people do not understand many of the American customs. They don’t like having to give a dime when they go into church. They never had to do that in Italy. That they resent it is resented by the priests. What happens? If they go to church, our poor Italians have to hear Mass in a basement apart from everybody else. So they stay away altogether. They are made to feel that they are strangers even in the House of the Lord. Now the Protestants are luring them away, buying them up. Most of these contadini have never so much as heard of Protestantism and don’t know that they are doing any harm. No wonder we lose them!”

“Father,” Francesca asked, “isn’t that all the more reason why Italian priests and nuns should work among them?”

“Of course it is; or it should be. But perhaps this will help you to understand why Italians are looked down upon even by their fellow-Catholics. You cannot expect much help from them. And among our own people there’s little unity. You will find all this out in time. I’m afraid you are going to encounter many difficulties.”

“I expected difficulties”, she returned serenely.

Further explanations came from the lady who had promised to provide Francesca with an orphanage. She was an American named Mary Reid who was married to Count Palma di Cesnola, an exile of the Risorgimento who had come to New York and was now director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had taken a house for the Sisters at 43 East Fifty-Ninth Street, putting up some money herself and collecting more from her friends. The trouble was that the archbishop disapproved of the location.

The contessa urged Francesca to take possession of the house and so force the archbishop’s hand. This she refused to do. “No,” she said, “though I came at the order of the pope, I must have the archbishop’s blessing. I shall wait.”

To Francesca, when she saw the archbishop again, he said bluntly: “The contessa is quite absurd in wanting to locate you in that wealthy and fashionable district. I cannot permit you to go there.”

“But Your Excellency,” Francesca protested, “the contessa thinks that an orphanage established there would attract notice and obtain support.”

“It would attract too much notice—not of the kind to do you any good. You must let me decide a matter of this sort. An Italian orphanage there would only arouse antagonism.”

The archbishop had some reason for his objection. He knew how despised Italians were, and he was afraid of wakening again the smoldering American animosity against foreigners. It had but recently been directed against the Irish, his own race. The American Protective Association, which had been organized only two years previously, was pallid enough when compared with the Know Nothings of the past; all the same, the archbishop had no wish to give it something it might seize upon. He realized that, though Nativism had social and economic roots, it always flowered into anti-Catholicism.

“No,” he told Francesca, “so long as the Italians keep to their Little Italies and remain out of sight, no harm will be done. But to bring them out swarming on Fifty-Ninth Street would be inviting disaster. If you can send some Sisters to teach at Saint Joachim’s parish, that will be all right. And if you can find a place for an orphanage downtown, that will be all right, too. But I thoroughly disapprove of the Contessa Cesnola’s scheme.”

“But she has already rented the house and furnished it

for me, Your Excellency.”

“Yes—without my permission. As you are here, I suppose I can find something for you to do, though I cannot undertake any financial help. Schools, yes; that orphanage, no.”

• • •

The most that Mother Cabrini could do was to get Archbishop Corrigan to consent to see the contessa. That she succeeded in this was a minor feat of tact, so far had relations become strained. This time, shifting his ground a little, the archbishop took the position that the material means to be put at the Sisters’ disposal would be altogether inadequate. He mentioned this merely by way of giving himself a second and supplementary argument. Francesca quickly made of it the main issue.

“So it is a question of resources, Your Excellency?” she asked innocently.

“Not altogether that, Mother”, he replied. “However, just to stick to this one point, how much money is it that you have, Contessa?”

“Five thousand dollars, Archbishop”, she told him.

“Not nearly enough! Five thousand dollars—how long do you suppose that will last? It will all be spent at the end of a year. What then?”

The contessa also was a quick-witted woman, and an impulsive one. Fastening by instinct on this one point, she contrived to remove the objection to Fifty-Ninth Street as a location from the discussion. She went down on her knees. “Your Excellency,” she exclaimed, “remember that in the Our Father we ask only for our daily bread—not bread for one year!”

Francesca did not kneel. She was disinclined for emotional scenes, so she stood there erect but a little puzzled, having no idea as to the meaning of the English words. The archbishop drew the contessa to her feet. There was no use in arguing with a woman, and by now he was more than half inclined to believe that if anybody could effect the impossible, it was this Italian nun. He gracefully gave in.

“All right, all right”, he said. “As you have already rented that house, I’ll let Mother Cabrini take possession of it.”

The Sisters got in on April 21, just three weeks after their arrival. A pleasant surprise awaited them: they found at the door a statue of the Sacred Heart, a gift they knew they were going to receive; it had been left on the doorsteps because there was nobody in the house. On the base of the statue somebody had put a loaf of bread. It was an omen. “You see!” cried Francesca. “Providence is never going to desert our little orphans.”

The following Sunday, which was Palm Sunday, the archbishop visited them, bearing with him the blessed palm he had received that morning in his cathedral at Mass. He gave it to Francesca, and she took it as her palm of triumph. It was the beginning of her great missionary career.