America Magazine – Like many a solid New York Catholic, I was taken as a boy to see Mother Cabrini, under glass, at the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine in Upper Manhattan. The bodies of saints, my mother told me at the time, do not decompose. Ah, I thought, that explains it. My sense of dread was replaced by awe. My sense of dread over the film Cabrini? It was replaced by respect, even joy, after encountering this less-than-exhaustive but elevating piece of biographical filmmaking about the immigrant Italian activist, healer and early Manhattan developer (of hospitals and orphanages)—the woman who became the first American saint. Mom may have been wrong, but she told a good story. So does Cabrini.
