Cabrini

I had no idea this movie was made by the same director and same studio as Sound of Freedom. I only realized it when most of the trailers were for Angel Studios films. Apparently it's a "family friendly" studio and streaming service that makes a lot of faith-based movies and TV shows. (However, this article claims it was already made before Angel Studios bought the film.) I didn't realize that the movie had a religious angle either (Francesca Cabrini was made a saint in the Catholic Church). My main takeaway from the movie description was that it was a biopic about an important historical woman, and that she fought against poverty in 1880-1890s New York; that subject interests me because of my unfinished Sherlock Holmes novel, where I want to have Helen Stoner involved in charities in New York.

So anyway I went to see the Cabrini movie, and it was actually good. The movie had a feminist, pro-immigrant tone, and it pointed out how each wave of European immigrants, including Irish, Polish, and Italians, had been met with racism and discrimination from nativist New Yorkers. (There was no commentary on non-European immigrants, and no we don't see Chinatown.) The religious angle isn't pushed so much as a general humanitarian tone. John Lithgow even appears as a Mayor of New York, who keeps trying to sabotage Cabrini and drive her back to Italy. We also learn that Cabrini is chronically ill, due to her almost drowning as a child; but she refuses to be held back, pushing always against men who underestimate her.

In 1889 New York, we see orphaned kids living in underground tunnels that were possibly sewers, but they didn't seem that wet to me. Meanwhile in Italy, the nun Mother Cabrini goes to Rome to get permission to start an international orphanage in China; when a Cardinal refuses her request, she insists on speaking to the Pope himself. The Pope also wants to dismiss her but he eventually relents. Over tea, he convinces Cabrini to start in New York instead of China, because he gets numerous letters from Italian immigrants speaking of their terrible living conditions. So he assigns Cabrini and her nuns to take over an orphanage in Five Points in New York. When they get there, the priest does not meet them at the port, and they have to walk to the neighborhood themselves. With help from a prostitute, they find a bedroom for the night, and the next day they confront the priest Father Morelli. He tells them that the Archbishop of his diocese cancelled their mission. So of course Cabrini demands to see the Archbishop. She tells him that her mission is from the Pope himself and she will stay. So she and her other nuns take over an abandoned orphanage and go looking for kids to adopt. They even meet the prostitute Vittoria again and accept her into their household as a sort of maid/cook or lay helper with the kids.

Villains appear, such as the pimp trying to take back Vittoria, and the New York mayor who won't let them move into a nicer (whiter) neighborhood when she gets enough donations to expand. She got those donations by convincing a newspaper journalist named Calloway to do an article about how the "even the rats" live better than the kids in the slums. Cabrini is creative in fundraising, always saying "start the mission" first, then the funds will come later. She makes a deal with the Archbishop to buy a former Jesuit mission with acres of land on which to raise her orphans; the only problem is a lack of well water, so they have to do a bucket line from the river and dig for wells. Then a factory disaster kills one of the orphans and also injures a lot of poor men, who cannot get treated in a hospital, because even the hospitals treat the Italian immigrants like scum.

Cabrini decides to start a hospital herself, and she convinces rich men (who are sons of immigrants) to help her buy the property. She still needs to raise funds to operate though, so she asks an Italian opera singer to help them. He sympathizes, but insists that he will never be involved in anything to do with the church. This comment is never explained, though I took it to mean that the Catholic Church hurt him in some way; perhaps being an entertainer, he or his friends are gay and feel shunned. The movie never explains what the problem is, and later he changes his mind when Cabrini brings a choir of orphans to sing to him. So they have an Italian fair in the park, raising thousands of dollars, only to be arrested and fined by the New York mayor who's still racist. The Archbishop gets mad at her too and tells her to leave New York and give up on the hospital. She goes back to Rome to plead once again with the Pope. She also pleads with the Senate to get a loan for the hospital. I'm not sure what "Senate" this is, but of course she always insists on speaking to the top guy, and finally gets approval by saying that they will get all the land if she fails. So Cabrini returns to New York and starts construction on the hospital. One more confrontation with the mayor and she wins, starting the first of many hospitals. Calloway explains that she eventually created "an empire of hope" with orphanages, schools, and hospitals across the globe, even including China. Eventually she got U.S. citizenship and was made the patron saint of immigrants by the Catholic Church.

I did admire this woman's fierceness and her attitude of "men could never do what we do" because of how much her women accomplish. Of course the Catholic Church is not a wholly good institution, and I don't know if the international missions did unwelcome proselytizing or acted like colonizers in Africa, China, etc. I do wonder why we didn't see Chinatown since Cabrini originally intended to go to China; is it a deliberate choice by the director to only focus on European immigrants? Whatever the reason, Cabrini did accomplish much good in her time. I wouldn't mind having my fictional Helen Stoner write her a check for her charities.