Mother Cabrini and the Institutions She Built for Immigrant America

by | Nov 12, 2026 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

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Mother Cabrini and the Institutions She Built for Immigrant America

By: Raymond Guarini

After many years of studying Mother Cabrini’s works, and having established her as the society patroness for the Italian Enclaves Historical Society due to her breadth of travels within America’s Italian enclaves, I decided that it was time for me to finally build an exhaustive list of the institutions that she founded. You will often hear people say that Mother Cabrini founded 67-or-so institutions, but there are very few actual examples cited as to which ones and where. The below cites each and every institution that she created chronologically; not only in the United States, but abroad. 

A photo that I took of a framed photograph of Mother Cabrini in the museum beneath Saint Anthony’s church in West Buffalo, NY.

On March 31, 1889, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini and six Missionary Sisters arrived in New York City. Within months, they had opened Holy Angels’ Orphanage in Manhattan and begun teaching at St. Joachim’s parish school on the Lower East Side. On her feast day, November 13, the Italian Enclaves Historical Society honors the woman who made schools, orphanages and hospitals part of the fabric of Italian immigrant life in the United States.

Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Codogno, Italy, in 1880. She had hoped to become a missionary in China, but Pope Leo XIII urged her to go west to serve Italian immigrants. New York proved a difficult place to begin. The sisters arrived with limited funds, little English and uncertain lodging. Archbishop Michael Corrigan initially urged them to return to Italy. Cabrini held her ground, and the sisters found local allies, among them Countess di Cesnola, who helped raise money for their work with orphans. In 1890 they moved Holy Angels’ Orphanage to West Park, New York, where they also opened their first American novitiate.

From the Lower East Side to the Pacific Northwest

In New York, the sisters’ work reached several Italian neighborhoods. They taught at Transfiguration School in Five Points, opened St. Rita’s School in the Bronx and offered vocational instruction to women at Our Lady of Pompeii in Greenwich Village. In 1892 Cabrini established Columbus Hospital in Manhattan. Within a few years it moved to East 20th Street, where the sisters added a dispensary.

In New Orleans, the 1891 lynching of eleven Italians showed how dangerous anti-Italian hostility could become. Cabrini visited the following year, and her sisters opened a free school and an orphanage. They later arranged a summer home in Long Beach, Mississippi, for children from the orphanage. In Chicago, the sisters ran tuition-free Assumption School and opened Columbus Hospital in Lincoln Park in 1905. Revenue from that hospital helped support the Columbus Extension Hospital, opened in 1910 on the West Side to provide free care to poor patients.

The work also reached the Ironbound in Newark, where the sisters organized a school at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and nearby Arlington, now part of Kearny, where they opened St. Anthony’s Orphanage. They established or staffed schools in Scranton, Philadelphia, Denver, Los Angeles and Seattle. Cabrini’s sisters visited families and went into hospitals, jails and mining communities. Cabrini kept traveling despite recurring ill health and died in Chicago in 1917, at the hospital she had founded. She became the first United States citizen to be canonized in 1946 and is honored as the patron saint of immigrants.

For those of us who document Italian enclaves, Cabrini’s legacy can be traced through the places where families went for help. A parish school gave children a place to learn close to home. An orphanage gave them a place to live. A hospital gave their parents somewhere to turn when they fell ill. The sisters’ work helps us see how Italian immigrant neighborhoods took shape and how their institutions sustained them.

A worldwide chronology of Cabrini’s foundations

The Missionary Sisters credit Cabrini and her congregation with 67 institutions across nine countries. A UCL doctoral study based on the congregation’s records lists 70 chronological entries, including relocations and sites where the sisters carried out several kinds of work. The congregation’s public account gives the total of 67 without identifying each entry, so the chronology below preserves the published records and marks relocations where documented. It also includes parish schools and other works the sisters took on during Cabrini’s lifetime.

1880–1888 · Italy

Year Place Institution or work
1880 Codogno First motherhouse, orphanage and school
1882 Grumello Free school and nursery
1884 Milan School and student residence
1885 Casalpusterlengo Free school and nursery
1885 Borghetto Lodigiano Free school and nursery
1886 Milan Student residence, relocated
1887 Milan School and student residence, relocated
1887 Rome Free pontifical school at Porta Pia, nursery, school and student residence
1888 Castel San Giovanni Orphanage and school

1889–1895 · Italy, the United States and Central America

Year Place Institution or work
1889 Manhattan, New York Holy Angels’ Orphanage and staffing of St. Joachim’s parish school
1889 Rome, Italy Student residence, relocated
1889 Aspra, Italy Nursery
1890 West Park, New York Holy Angels’ Orphanage, relocated from Manhattan, and the first American novitiate
1891 Granada, Nicaragua Colegio Inmaculada, a school for girls
1892 New Orleans, Louisiana Italian mission with a free school, orphanage and church work
1892 Manhattan, New York Columbus Hospital
1892 Brooklyn, New York St. Charles School
1892 Monte Compatri, Italy Free school, nursery and vacation house
1893 Genoa, Italy School and student residence
1894 Rome, Italy School, nursery and student residence at a new site
1895 Manhattan, New York Columbus Hospital, relocated to East 20th Street, with a dispensary
1895 Panama School

1896–1905 · Expansion in Europe and the Americas

Year Place Institution or work
1896 Buenos Aires, Argentina School
1898 Paris, France Women’s residence
1898–99 New York City Transfiguration School in Five Points, St. Rita’s School in the Bronx and a trade school at Our Lady of Pompeii
1898 Rome, Italy Novitiate and motherhouse
1899 Chicago, Illinois Assumption School
1899–1901 Scranton, Pennsylvania St. Lucy’s School, planned in 1899 and opened in 1901
1898–99 Newark, New Jersey Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish school
1899 Manhattan, New York Sacred Heart College, a day and boarding school at Sacred Heart Villa
1899 Long Beach, Mississippi Summer home for children from the New Orleans orphanage
1899 Neuilly-sur-Marne, France Orphanage for Italian children
1899 Madrid, Spain School and student residence
1900 Turin, Italy Day school
1900 San Raffaele Cimena, Italy Retirement home
1900 Città della Pieve, Italy School
1900 Marsciano, Italy Nursery and day school
1900 Bilbao, Spain Orphanage and day school
1901 Caballito, Buenos Aires, Argentina Buenos Aires school, relocated
1901 Flores, Buenos Aires, Argentina Irish orphanage taken into the sisters’ administration
1901 Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina International school
1901 Villa Mercedes, San Luis, Argentina Sacred Heart school and student residence
1901 Rome, Italy Free school relocated to a larger site, with the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer
1902 Brockley, London, England Sacred Heart school
1903 Denver, Colorado Two day schools, including Mount Carmel School
1903 Arlington, now part of Kearny, New Jersey St. Anthony’s Orphanage
1903 Chicago, Illinois First of two Chicago hospital entries in the UCL chronology. The National Shrine dates the opening of the Lincoln Park hospital to 1905.
1903 Seattle, Washington Italian mission with school and church work. City records also date the first orphanage site to 1903.
1903 São Paulo, Brazil School
1904 New Orleans, Louisiana Orphanage relocated and school work expanded
1905 Denver, Colorado Regina Coeli Orphanage and school work
1905 Los Angeles, California Queen of Heaven Orphanage, St. Peter’s parish school and Holy Angels Kindergarten
1905 Burbank, California Property acquired for orphanage use, listed as a vacation home in the UCL chronology
1905 Chicago, Illinois Second Chicago hospital entry in the UCL chronology. The National Shrine dates the opening of the separate Columbus Extension Hospital to 1910.
1905 Des Plaines, Illinois Vacation home

1908–1917 · Later foundations and relocations

Year Place Institution or work
1908 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil School
1910 Honor Oak, London, England Sacred Heart school relocated from Brockley, with expanded schooling, church and residence work
1911 Codogno, Italy Day school
1912 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania St. Donato parish school and Sacred Heart Orphanage
1913 Seattle, Washington Sacred Heart Orphanage site on Lake Washington
1914 Dobbs Ferry, New York Sacred Heart Villa orphanage
1914 Noisy-le-Grand, France Orphanage site for girls transferred from Neuilly-sur-Marne
1915 Pontremoli, Italy Day school
1915 Okehampton, Devon, England Vacation house
1915 Ponte Lucano, Italy Community work
1916 Seattle, Washington Columbus Sanitarium, later Columbus Hospital and then Cabrini Hospital
1917 Sopelana, Spain Orphanage
1917 Park Ridge, Illinois Farm supplying the Chicago hospital and the sisters
Undated Cerretoli, Italy Site listed without a description
Undated Sambuci, Italy Site listed without a description

Sources

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