A new movie about a generational heroine: From the same director and screenwriter that gave us The Sound of Freedom

When Hollywood produces a film about Italian-Americans, it usually is of a certain vintage, and the purveyors of such art are usually their descendants. In a change of pace, enter the talented duo of director Alejandro Monteverde and screenwriter Rod Barr, who collaborated last year on the highly acclaimed Sound of Freedom, one of the most successful independent films ever. That’s a feat difficult to match, let alone top, but their film Cabrini is poised to do just that, opening in over 3,000 theaters nationwide next week.

When Barr was pitched by the film’s producers to write the screenplay of a sainted Catholic nun in a period piece that begins with her immigration to the United States in 1889, he was incredulous. However, after immersing himself in all things Cabrini, he was sold.

Monteverde, a wide-ranging artistic director, was perhaps an easier sell, saying, “There are films you want to do and films you are called to do.”

With Cabrini, he fulfilled both.

The engrossing Cabrini preview struck a chord. I was somewhat familiar with Mother Cabrini and knew she was the first canonized American saint — something most Catholics of Italian descent are familiar with.

Mother Cabrini was not the typical saint, provided there is such a profile. Saints are Asian, black, Indian, white, men and women. You want diversity? Look no further than the communion of saints. Georges Bernanos, the French Catholic writer, said that modernists think — either out of arrogance or regret — that the era of the saints is over. Saints, and the miracles that accompany them, exist and have existed in every era.

The petite Italian native Francesca Cabrini was the youngest of 13, born two months prematurely, and struggled with poor health her entire life.

The Irish American Sisters of Charity NY who taught me had a special affection for Sister Cabrini. It was the SCNY who gave Frances Cabrini refuge and a place to call home when she first arrived. As fot the author’s statement that Italians were not considered to be white. There is a famous foto of Mulberry Street in 1910 where you are hard pressed to call anyone in it white. And in a mark of ignorance on Feb 1 this year WCBS TV NY CH 2 ran a series of fotos of blacks, individuals, groups, and scenes.in history. Some famous some not. But one of those pics was the one of Mulberry Street. Perhaps someone with greater skill than I, that’s most of you I’d guess, can locate the Pic and post it. For those are the people Frances Cabrini came to serve.

https://mothercabrinishrine.org/the-shrine

“About Mother Cabrini Shrine
Mother Cabrini loved the mountains of Colorado. The foothills west of Denver held a special attraction for her. During her journeys in 1902 to visit the Italian workers and their families in the Clear Creek, Argentine, and South Park mining districts, Frances X. Cabrini discovered a property on the east slope of Lookout Mountain owned by the town of Golden.

No reliable source of water was known to exist on the property at that time, although there were two fine barns and a springhouse built in the 1890s. In 1909–1910, she negotiated the purchase of this property as a summer camp for her charges at the Queen of Heaven Orphanage in Denver, CO.”

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