“Between 1889 and 1910, over two million Italians immigrated to the United States. They were desperately poor, often illiterate, and almost never spoke English. Many Americans considered these Italians to be of inferior intelligence, fit only for menial labor and a threat to the very fabric of America.”
I have to admit to a particular bias here. I am Italian. My grandparents immigrated here in the early 19th century. I am also Catholic, as most of these Italian immigrants were. In addition, I feel a bit of a connection to Mother Cabrini. The first school I attended back in first grade was that attached to my Italian Catholic parish, and it was called the Cabrini Academy. So there is a certain bias toward the subject here, but I might point out it also leads to very high expectations that these subjects are treated correctly. I still very much demanded a compelling story and an inspirational lead. In director Alejandro Monteverde’s Cabrini, I was fortunate enough to find both. I know there are folks with prejudices against Italians, Catholics, or both. I suggest you give this a try. It just might change the way you look at these issues.
“Begin the mission, and the means will come.”
We first meet Mother Cabrini, played by Cristiana Dell’Anna. as she finds herself being ignored by the elite in the Vatican. She is looking to start her own order of nuns and build orphanages in China. She takes her pleas all the way up to the skeptical Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII, played by Giancarlo Giannini. It’s 1889. and no woman has ever started her own religious order in the Church. But she makes a convincing argument. He admires her persistence and realizes she’s a problem that is never going to just go away. So he offers her a compromise. He will let her start an order and build an orphanage, but not in China. Rather, he is personally moved by the plight of Italian immigrants in the United States, where they live in a ghetto called Five Points and are denied city or federal funds, which are legally barred from being applied to charities that serve Italians. She recruits six nuns to her order and they sail to America …to New York City.
“We built Rome; I think we can manage a hospital.”
In New York she finds no friend in Archbishop Corrigan, played by David Morse. He’s Irish and has little sympathy for the Italians in his diocese. He wants her to go back home in defiance of the Pope’s orders. Like all men in authority before him, he soon finds he can’t stand up to her force-of-nature persistence. As the nuns take their place at Five Points, they see poverty and living conditions like they have never seen before. She wants desperately to help them but finds fights at every place along the way. Corrigan has forbidden her to seek donations from anyone but other Italians. The Mayor, played by John Lithgow, makes it clear that none of the city’s resources will be spent on a single Italian. Slowly she finds a way to roll that rock up its steep hill, causing uproar over giving aid to a local prostitute who seeks shelter from her pimp. He’s a guy named Geno; unfortunately pimps aren’t too good with spelling, and he obviously misspells his own name. Even after getting sent back to Rome because she doesn’t have the funds, she implores once more of Pope Leo XIII and shames the Roman bankers into supporting her. The truth is that she established 63 facilities across every habitable continent on the Earth before she was done. And all from a woman who had weak lungs as a child and was too often told to know her place. Given maybe three years to live, she outlasted all of her detractors and was canonized as the first American saint.
“We can serve our weakness, or we can serve our purpose. Not both.”
Maybe that’s not quite so true. The first thing you will notice about this film is that while it begins in the lavish settings of the Vatican, the New York slums stand as a powerful contrast to anything you might have experienced. The film’s production design is simply awesome. This is one of the more convincing period pieces I’ve seen in some time, and I dare you not to be moved by what you see. Cristiana Dell’Anna is both compelling and inspiring, as I alluded to earlier. I have never seen her before, but she packs a ton of grace and grit in the kind of combination that has to be hard to pull off. How do you maintain the quiet and humble personality when you are raising this kind of hell? I’ve seen the movie, and I still don’t know how she does it. She never appears to bully her detractors, but there’s a simple element in her demeanor that refuses to accept no for an answer. It’s a truly remarkable performance.
I’ve heard a lot over the years from people who have been oppressed in the past, and I’m often told that as a “white” guy I can’t understand generational oppression. Ask Sacco and Vanzetti. Well, you could if they had not been lynched. In 1977 it was finally proclaimed they were unfairly tried and executed. I’m sure that’s a comfort to their families. Growing up I heard the words WOP and dego used on me. My grandparents had it worse, but they never complained, and people like Mother Cabrini changed the world, so most of you reading this would be surprised at the persecution of Italian-Americans. As for Catholic persecution? Google the Know-Nothing Party, and you’re in for a huge surprise. It was once illegal for a Catholic in this country to be employed by the federal government. There’s a lot to learn here, and I hope it gets the visibility to get that attention. I challenge you to check it out. “Open your eyes. See everything.”
