Review of CABRINI: Improving the Indignity of Italian Immigrants

June 23, 2024

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini (Cristiana Dell'Anna) was a nun who wanted to establish her own order of female missionaries dedicated to the care of orphans worldwide. She repeatedly wrote Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini) to request permission, but was rejected. She sought a personal audience with the Pope to tell him the details of her plan to build orphanages in China. However, the Pope sent her to start her mission in New York City first instead.   

Mother Cabrini and her sisters immediately experienced discrimination upon their arrival as the coachman did not want to take them to their assignment in Five Points. This was a slum where impoverished Italian immigrants led a hand-to-mouth existence as they were shunned by the white communities around them. The white Mayor (John Lithgow) would have nothing to do with them. Even the white Archbishop (David Morse) initially rejected to help them.

This was a straightforward biography of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the founder of  the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880. She is known as the first US citizen canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church. The film showed how she boldly stood up against the powerful men around her who belittled her being an Italian and a woman. She never let her serious lung disease get in the way of the accomplishment of her mission. 

However, the more eye-opening aspect of this story that struck me was the severity of the racial discrimination of Italian immigrants during that time in the history of New York. This was clearly seen in opening scene of little boy Paolo (Federico Ielapi) pushing his dying mother around the streets in a wheelbarrow, desperately looking for a hospital which would accept her. I never knew that Italian immigrants also suffered such inhumane indignities

Mexican director Alejandro Monteverde tackles another religious-themed story of human injustice, after "Sound of Freedom" (2023). Monteverde created several beautiful images here that evoked nostalgia, like Cabrini's paper boats with violets on the water, her profile on the porthole of the ship, and the Statue of Liberty across the bay when they landed. The screenplay by Rod Barr gave Cabrini several strong feminist lines to deliver, the most powerful being "Men can never do what we do." 8/10.