Fra Ezechiele Ma. Gamboa, FI

We are all too familiar with movies like The Passion of Christ, The Song of Bernadette, Ben Hur, Brother Sun Sister Moon, The Chosen and many other films that shows at least Christian, if not catholic, values. Last March 08, 2024, another movie was added on this long list: Cabrini.       

The new film about America’s first canonized Saint and Patroness of the Immigrants explores the sexism and anti-Italian bigotry faced by the Saint and others in New York City in the late 19^th century.

Cabrini director Alejandro Monteverde was drawn in by the story of this saint, described by a speaker at the opening of one of her hospitals as “a little woman,” who stood barely 5 feet tall, but held her own in eloquence and grit.

“There was so much against her and to see what she was able to build and to build for others,” he told Our Sunday Visitor News, “that in itself, caught my attention.”

Monteverde was “shocked” as a Catholic that he didn’t know her story prior to being approached about the film, especially given the fact that she was the first American saint.

The film shows Mother Cabrini’s efforts to go to China, which are met with Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) telling her instead to go “not to the East, but to the West” to New York City to minister to Italian immigrants and orphans who faced extreme poverty and discrimination.

PHOTO: Cabrini. Angel Studios