Funding for the the American Women Saints Series on Elizabeth Ann Seton and Frances Xavier Cabrini was provided by: the Catholic Communication Campaign the Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton Foundation Additional funding was provided by the following: In 1850, I was born Maria Francesca Cabrini.

In 1850, I was born Maria Francesca Cabrini.

I was baptized a Roman Catholic.

Instead of calling me Francesca, my parents called me Cecchina, or little Francesca.

I was the 10th of 11 children, but seven had died early on.

I grew up with confidence because my family showered me with love and affection.

My family owned lots of land in a town called Sant'Angelo Lodigiano.

This is in the province known as Lodi, in the region of Italy called Lombardy.

In fact, for many generations, my father's family had owned this land.

And because the land is surrounded by many rivers, this land is very fertile and very valuable for growing agricultural products like grapes and livestock.

[COW MOO] Now, my mother's family owned a famous pharmaceutical firm in nearby Milan, and in 1876, my cousin Agostino de Depretis became the Italian prime minister.

So of course, one of the key things in my life was I grew up with privilege and political connections.

Now, at age 13, I went to a boarding school in nearby Arluno, run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

At my boarding school, I studied to become a teacher since my older Sister Rosa became one too.

But what I really wanted to do was I wanted to join the religious order of Sisters that was running my school.

It was such a great atmosphere where the Sisters weren't teaching for a paycheck, but for the love of the students as if they were their own children.

And this method of teaching was promoted by the wealthy woman who started the order.

Her name was Teresa Verzeri.

She later was declared a saint.

So this school was wonderful.

And more than the studies, I loved living with the Sisters.

There was a lot of prayer and meditation, just what I wanted.

And so I told them I wanted to join them, but they rejected me.

Wow.

What a blow.

This whole time, I thought I found my calling.

Now, what was I going to do?

So in 1868, I finished my studies.

And since my older sister Rosa was running the Sant'Angelo public school system, I knew I could get a job there with no problem.

Then in 1870, when I was 20, smallpox came to Sant'Angelo.

So I went to help the sick.

Now, smallpox is a viral disease, and 30% of the time the infected person will die.

But I was willing to take that chance.

Unfortunately, I came down with it, too.

But luckily for me, it wasn't fatal.

Then in 1871, I was asked to replace another teacher in a public school in a nearby town called Vidardo.

So I moved there.

I did so well in that job that I was made the school principal.

Now, the interesting thing about this school is that since it was public, teaching religion was not allowed.

So I argued with the mayor to let religion courses be permitted and the mayor relented.

You know, every year I made a retreat with the Missionary Canossian Sisters of Crema.

This order was started by a wealthy woman named Magdalena of Canossa.

And later Magdalena was declared a saint.

For as long as I can remember.

I had always wanted to become a religious missionary.

A missionary is a person, usually a priest sent to a foreign country to bring Christianity.

But this wasn't something unique to me.

Other northern Italian religious like Bishop Daniel Comboni he did missionary work in places like Africa.

And one of my favorite saints was Saint Francis Xavier from Spain.

He did missionary work in India and Japan.

He wanted to go to China, but he died before that became a reality.

And now these Sisters that I made a retreat with.

They were sending women to China.

So I thought that joining them would be perfect for me.

But they rejected me, too.

And you know why?

Because the priests in Vidardo liked what I was doing for the school system so much that they told the Canossians to reject me.

I tell you, this experience says a lot for priests satisfying their own selfish needs, even to the point of suppressing a woman's desire to seek God.

So after that, I wanted nothing more to do with Vidardo.

And I went to work in another town.

But still, I wanted in the worst way to live some type of religious life.

Now, to somewhat satisfy that desire, sometime before I had joined the third order of Saint Francis.

Now, what is that?

Well, Saint Francis was a man who lived a devout, pious life in the 1200s.

And he started an order for religious men, which is known as the first order of Saint Francis.

Then he started a second order, which was for religious women.

Then he started a third order for non-religious men and women like me.

Even married people can be part of it.

You don't take religious vows, you can live at home and wearing a habit is optional.

Supposedly, Christopher Columbus had joined the third order, and from time to time he wore the Franciscan habit.

Isn't that interesting?

Anyway, after Vidardo, I had to get another job.

So some priest friends suggested to Lodi's Bishop Gelmini that I'd be hired to take over a badly run orphanage in his district of Codogno.

Now, in Italy, when a parent wants to give away their child, they can go to the hospital where there's a wheel called La Ruota degli Esposti.

And then they anonymously place the child into it and they turn the wheel and the child is then put in an orphanage.

But I told Gelmini that I wasn't interested in working in an orphanage.

I said to him that I wanted to join a religious community that did missionary work in China.

So he told me that the orphanage had its own religious order and that I could join it.

Well, that was a game changer.

So in 1874, I entered the House of Providence and I stayed there for six years.

The first three were okay.

But the last three years were pure hell.

Let me explain.

Remember now [DRIPPING WATER] I'm entering the House of Providence, expecting to join their religious Order.

Right?

But when I got there, there really was not much of an Order yet.

But when I got there, there really was not much of an Order yet.

There wasn't even any Mother Superior.

The two wealthy women, Tondini and Calza who bought the land and ran the orphanage, they were the founders of this new Order.

But they were still in religious formation themselves, and yet they were my superiors.

How can that be?

Plus, there were five other women like me who also wanted to join.

So everyone was a novice.

It was all very weird.

Anyway, Tondini and Calza did not want me to take over the orphanage, but they made me secretary.

And because of my work, the orphanage stabilized and grew.

I actually started many new programs to help the community, too, like home economics and adult education.

Then, after a while, the diocese appointed me novice mistress, which means I was now responsible for the formation of the other women.

In other words, I was there to help the novices develop their relationship with God and most importantly, figure out if joining our community was truly their calling.

The problem was that if I wasn't even a religious myself, how could I be leading the formation of other women?

I'm telling you, it was all very weird.

I must say, this was not the community I imagined myself joining.

I imagined my formation would include interacting with a loving novice mistress.

But instead I was my own novice mistress.

I also thought my formation would consist of being obedient to a stern, but loving, wisdom filled Mother Superior.

In my case, my Mother Superiors, Tondini and Calza, had no interest in their novices.

I kept asking myself, What was this place I was joining and why did Gelmini allow it to start?

And most of all, what was I doing being a party to any of this?

But I stayed anyway.

And in 1877, at age 27, I donned the habit.

I was finally a religious Sister of the House of Providence, and I guess I was happy.

But, you know, I've got to tell you, I had always fantasized that when I finally took my vows to become a Sister, I thought I would be entering this solemn community and be part of some dignified, sublime consecration ceremony under the direction of some pious women with choirs of angels singing in the background.

But it was nothing like that.

It was all quite so disappointing.

Anyway, when I donned the habit, you know, you take an alternate name and I took the name Xavier.

My name was now Frances Xavier Cabrini.

I picked the name Xavier from Saint Francis Xavier because of his extensive missionary work in Asia.

Although what missionary work was I thinking that I would do?

I was in a community taking care of orphans in Lombardy, Italy.

This certainly was not going to be missionary work.

Okay, so now I'm a religious Sister of this weird community.

Now what?

Well, it gets worse.

Tondini and Calza didn't like me.

Maybe they got jealous of me.

I don't know.

But they were always reprimanding me and constantly creating negative gossip about me in town.

In fact, they wanted me out.

Meanwhile, Gelmini knew what was going on and decided not to allow anyone else to enter the House of Providence until the community could be repaired.

[LOCK CLICK] So in order to repair the community, guess what he did?

He did something that made Tondini and Calza furious.

Gelmini made me Mother Superior.

Now, in another community, I might have been honored, but at this point I was more scared than anything else.

I was now the superior and Tondini and Calza now had to be obedient to me.

But do you think that was going to happen?

Not only did they ignore me, but Tondini and Calza tried to break me so that I would resign as Mother Superior.

I mean, for several years I wrote to the Bishop, but he did nothing.

Let me give you some examples of what they were doing to me.

First, Tondini would follow me into chapel and stand behind me the whole time I was praying.

And then she would ask again and again what I had prayed about.

Then one day in October 1877, Tondini and Calza tried to force me to write my resignation.

And those are just the psychological moments.

Then there were the violent moments.

Suffice it to say, there were occasions when Tondini and Calza openly demonstrated such hatred for me that I had the Sisters take turns at night guarding the door of my room.

Yes, it's hard to believe that a religious community would be like this, but don't think my community was alone in this type of dysfunction.

I mean, just think about Saint Benedict and how his monks treated him.

They tried to poison him.

So sometimes this is what the head of a religious community has to deal with.

Finally, the donors had found out that Tondini and Calza were giving orphanage money to their own relatives.

And so the donors stop giving money.

And because money of the diocese was in peril, the situation now got the Bishop's attention.

So the Bishop got mad and in 1880 he closed down the House of Providence.

[EXPLOSION] Well, I wasn't sorry to see that finally happen.

I mean, obviously the House of Providence was not a peaceful, God seeking community.

Of course, I mustn't overstate religious houses.

They're not the peaceful communities you may think they are where everyone is living in harmony.

In fact, I would say they're not places for the faint of heart.

In fact, I would say they're not places for the faint of heart.

Many times they are tough environments to live in.

Think about it.

With so many different women living together, there's bound to be friction and differences of opinion.

So get it out of your head that a religious community is utopia.

It's not.

It's hard work.

You have to take orders.

Your life is not your own.

Your time is not your own.

You're not allowed to do what you want.

For a house to stay in order.

Obedience has to be the rule.

But the motive of seeking God is the thing that keeps you there.

Can you see God on your own outside of joining a religious community?

Absolutely.

To do this, you must put God first.

By this I mean you should pray each day, study the Bible, serve others, live a sinless life by resisting temptation and don't put value on material things.

But I needed much more than that.

I needed to be in a place where I was living 24 hours a day with like minded people, where everyone is constantly in the same mode and can help each other in seeking God.

There's nothing like it.

Plus, I wanted to make a religious vow.

I wanted to be totally committed to God and nothing else.

It's exactly the same as wanting to marry someone you love so that you're totally dedicated to them.

So, yeah, there was no other way.

I had to join an Order.

But the House of Providence was not that Order.

But immediately after, in 1880, Bishop Gelmini told me to start my own religious community, and he made me the Mother Superior.

You know, this House of Providence episode did two things for me: first, it was a reality check.

It took all my sentimental romantic pie in the sky notions of religious life.

and threw them right out the window.

[GLASS SHATTERS] I came to the conclusion that religious life is not choirs of angels and ecstatic moments.

But that life is tough.

And through it all, you must always act like Jesus.

The second thing I learned was that even supposedly God loving religious people were capable of doing evil.

And ironically, that realization had deepened my religious commitment; that because of the presence of evil people in the world, there were abundant opportunities that required me to do good works.

So anyway, most of the Sisters and I from the House of Providence, moved into an old Franciscan friary to start a new orphanage and a new Order.

And on November 4th, 1880, our new Order was called the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Our acronym was M.S.C.

which stands for the Latin: Missionarii Sacratissimi Cordis I named it Missionary Sisters because I eventually wanted to open a new house in China.

But immediately the name became a problem with the Bishop for two reasons: First, he didn't want MSC expanding beyond his diocese.

Now, that may make Gelmini sound selfish, and he was partly, but one important thing was this was the 1880s [YELLING, GUNS, EXPLOSION] and Italian Unification had recently happened in 1871, and those who fought for a unified Italy were anti-clerical.

That is, they didn't trust the Church and they didn't want the Vatican having political control over parts of Italy anymore.

So going outside the Bishop's realm might have been physically dangerous for my Order.

But you know what?

I couldn't care less about any of that.

If I was in danger, then God would protect me.

And if he didn't protect me, well, then that was God's will, too, right?

But another important thing is I didn't want to make enemies with Gelmini, since the Bishop is my superior and he could easily close my Order.

And not only that, but Bishops also give your Order legitimacy so that people will donate to you.

One negative word from the Bishop, and I might not get money from anyone.

So I had to be mindful of the Bishop.

The second reason the Bishop didn't like the word missionary is that nothing in the Church with the word mission was run by women.

And that makes sense since the goal of missionaries is to travel to other parts of the world to baptize people, and normally only a man can perform baptism.

So since a woman cannot usually perform baptism, she couldn't be called a missionary.

In fact, the Italian language didn't have a female form of the word missionary.

The Italian word for missionary is missionario, which is a masculine word.

The feminine form of the word missionary didn't exist.

Look at my Order's name.

It says Missionarii, which is the plural of the masculine form Missionario.

Anyway, the Bishop finally gave our name his approval.

Okay, so I was the head of this new Order, and my first priority was to write up a rule that the Bishop accepted in 1881.

In my rule, I strove for three principles: knowing God, kindness and humility.

The first principle is that we must never stop trying to know God.

And that means: reading the Bible, praying and taking the Eucharist as much as possible.

Okay.

Kindness.

This is the same as charity, which is about serving others.

In fact, trying to know God without performing acts of charity is of little value.

I don't think we're put on this earth to serve God.

He doesn't need our help.

I think we're actually here to serve one another, and it's in serving one another that we're serving God.

And now what about humility?

Well, this is key.

So listen up.

Humility means that you must not see yourself and your desires as important.

The important thing is what God wants, not what you want.

And if you don't learn this principle, you'll end up listening to yourself and you'll miss it when God is talking to you.

So you must build up an ability to subdue your own desires and stop listening to yourself.

And this will make you more responsive to the will of God.

And like any other technique, you need to constantly do exercises at getting better at humility.

The first exercise is mortification.

This is when you deny yourself things that you like.

For instance, if you like coffee, then deny yourself and don't drink it.

If you like salt on your food, don't use it.

Mortification also reminds you that your desires can never be satisfied.

I mean, isn't it true that you can never have enough?

So get it in your head to stop trying to satisfy your desires.

It will never happen.

You must learn that the only thing that satisfies is God.

A second exercise is obedience.

For instance, if a superior imposes a revolting task on you like cleaning up the bathroom of a sick person.

Yes, certainly at times you'll seem to be in agony and the task may seem impossible.

But don't think.

Just do what you're told as if you were a child.

Place total trust in God and this obedience will make you strong.

Anyway, another exercise is self-sacrifice.

For instance, you have to be willing to attend to sick people who are suffering from a deadly disease like smallpox or yellow fever.

And in doing so, you may be infected, but you must be willing to forget about yourself and serve others even to the point of death.

So for the next seven years, we took in many new Sisters and created new houses around Codogno.

Whenever I saw the need, I worked hard to get new projects completed.

For instance, I established more schools and a teacher's college residence, including one in Milan in 1884.

But Bishop Gelmini was opposed to us starting a school in Milan, probably because he was afraid that the Bishop of Milan would now have influence over my Order too.

And I would downplay such opposition by my superiors by saying that no limit should be placed on the actions of Providence.

In fact, after a while, one technique that I developed was I got used to beginning projects without the full consent of my male cleric superiors, since they were always being contrarians or they were so slow to decide.

Another technique that I was developing was that everything I did, I tried not to be beholden to any priests or Bishops.

I tried to get the money to own the project outright.

I simply did not want to be bogged down with bureaucracy and the slowness of the clergy.

So in 1887, after the Order was seven years old, I decided that we were ready to go global.

after the Order was seven years old, I decided that we were ready to go global.

That is, I wanted to start a new house in China, but now I got opposition to that move from the Bishop of Milan.

But I was able to change his mind.

Now, every house in a Catholic diocese is controlled by a Bishop.

But since this house will be doing works in a non-Catholic country like China, where no Bishop exists, then the only male cleric that could oversee global missions would be the Pope.

And so the headquarters for this new house would have to be based in Rome.

But before I could set up this house, I had to get the Pope's approval.

And if I couldn't get his approval, then my missionary project would be dead in the water.

[SPLASH] So I got together recommendations from my Bishops and went to Rome.

And the first person I had to see about approving this new mission was Cardinal Parocchi the Vicar General of His Holiness, the Pope.

And because he said my Order didn't have enough years of experience, he rejected by new mission.

But he didn't shut the door completely, saying he might change his mind if I was able to come with 500,000 lira.

And if I couldn't do that, he told me to go home.

But of course, I wasn't going anywhere.

But then where was I going to get that kind of money?

So to appease him, I promised that if he would allow me to open a house in Rome, I would use it to run a free school for the poor.

I figured it this way: this would give me the cachet to have my congregation get the Pope's approval.

And guess what?

The Vicar allowed me to open a new house, and I had my foot in the door.

He jokingly said to me, Now, are you ready to obey?

And I said, Undoubtedly, your Eminence.

And then he said, Instead of founding one house and school in Rome, you will found two.

And of course, I agreed to everything.

So I called five Sisters down to Rome and started these two new houses and schools.

Needless to say, I didn't have the money for any of this.

But I didn't worry about that.

I tell you, I never worry about money.

I believe that if it's meant to be, God will help you find the money.

Don't you agree?

Anyway, I was about to go home to Codogno and plan my next strategy to get the Pope's approval.

But before I left, I got a letter from Bishop Scalabrini of Piacenza asking to speak to me.

Now, some months before I said I would do him a favor.

It seemed that in his diocese there was a Benedictine Order of Sisters that was falling apart.

[GLASS SHATTERS] So he asked me if I could open a new MSC house in his diocese.

Let the Benedictine Sisters join that house.

And MSC would also assume control of their school, orphanage and their hospital.

And I told him I would work something out.

So he was grateful to me.

But now, while I was in Rome, Scalabrini wanted to talk to me.

Now, Scalabrini was a special guy.

Besides being a Bishop, he was also an advisor to Pope Leo the 13th.

In fact, he was one of Italy's and the Catholic Church's foremost thinkers.

And one of the things he thought a lot about was Italians emigrating to the United States.

Scalabrini knew that emigration was a big shame for Italy.

I mean, millions of Italians were leaving their homes and going to other parts of the world because they couldn't find enough work in Italy.

But Scalabrini also knew that without emigrating, many Italians would starve.

So he knew that emigration was a necessity.

And he was there not only to help those who wanted to leave, but he also wanted to help the emmigrants in their new destinations so that they were not exploited.

For years, Scalabrini had been telling the Pope that a big problem, especially in the United States, was that the U.S. Catholics were prejudiced against the Italian immigrants.

And so the Pope demanded that the American Bishops help the Italian immigrants.

But the U.S. Bishops at the third Plenary Council in Baltimore in 1884 blatantly ignored the Pope's demand.

So there was so much work that Scalabrini had to do to make up for the negligence by the U.S. Bishops that in 1887 he started the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo, which was an Order of priests that would address the problems of the immigrants.

Scalabrini did so much good work and was such a pious man that the church declared him a saint in 2022.

So anyway, in Rome, Scalabrini came to see me.

He told me that he wanted me to go to the U.S. to help assist his priests with the Italian immigrants in New York City.

Well, I said that I didn't want to do it.

I mean, the major reason was that I wanted to go to China, not the U.S. Another big reason was because I didn't want to involve my Order in someone else's mission.

I told him that if I was going to start a mission somewhere, I wanted full autonomy to do what I wanted.

Now, see, this is what I was talking about before.

At this point, what do you think God wants?

God obviously wants me to go to the U.S. to take care of the immigrants, But that's not what I wanted.

I wanted to go to China.

Now, wouldn't you think that with all the praying and all the practicing of self-denial I did, that I was at the point in my life where I could clearly hear God calling me to do missionary work in the U.S. Wouldn't you think that I was at the point of deep humility where I could put aside my desires and be excited about what God wanted me to do in the U.S.?

But I wasn't excited about this.

I wanted to go to China, not the U.S. and that was that.

[POP SOUND] So I told Scalabrini that I wasn't interested in his proposal, and I put his offer out of my mind.

But he didn't put me out of his mind.

In fact, it seems that Scalabrini contacted ArchBishop Corrigan of New York, and he told Corrigan to write to me, asking that I send Sisters to take over a Catholic school in New York City.

So I get this letter from Corrigan saying that he also wanted me to start an orphanage for the immigrants, promising me that some wealthy Italians in the U.S. had already donated a large sum of money to start this orphanage.

Wow.

I couldn't believe this.

Scalabrini, was blowing up my mission to China.

[EXPLOSION] And I'm telling you, I wasn't going to have any of this.

So finally, it was time for me to go back to Rome to see the Vicar.

You know what he told me?

He said that my mission got the Pope's approval.

I was floored.

I kept asking myself, why had he changed his mind?

Why was I given such favor?

Was it that the Vicar knew that I was politically connected?

That is that was a cousin to the Italian Prime minister, Agostino Depretis.

Or was the Vicar playing favorites with me since we were both from Lombardy?

And then check this out.

The Vicar told me that I should go to the U.S. and not China.

It was then I realized Scalabrini probably had gotten to him already.

Was this why I got the approval?

But I still wasn't going to cave in to their demands.

Who were these men to tell me where I should take my mission?

I wanted to go to the East, not the West.

So then I had finally gotten to meet with Pope Leo himself.

And you know what he told me?

He told me to go to the West, not the East.

Now, if an angel had told me this, I would have been quite skeptical, wondering if I had seen an illusion.

But when you meet Pope Leo, he's a comforting person and truly seems to be a holy man.

So much so that when I heard him speak these words, I was assured that this directive seemed to be coming from God himself.

So the message was loud and clear: it wasn't about what I wanted.

It was what God wanted.

And no matter what I did, God was going to have his way.

So I gave in.

The sad part is that I needlessly put a lot of people through so many machinations and bureaucracy.

Why don't I just cut to the chase and agree to go to the U.S. when Scalabrini first asked me?

Why did I have to be such a barrier to God?

I mean, I teach my Sisters not to do this, and yet I suffer from it myself.

And, you know, before I left the Pope, he said something interesting to me.

He said that my institute was young and that it needed money.

And with this money, I would then be able to do large works and that I would find this money in the U.S. and that I would find this money in the U.S. And he was right.

Because of the industrial revolution, the U.S. was a land of incredible amounts of money.

And so now I had to go to the U.S. to find this money and do good works.

So I ran back home, picked out a small group of Sisters, and I started to make preparations to leave for the U.S. We even started to learn English.

By the way, this is a photo of us.

This is me sitting down holding the book.

Then we got some send offs, one in Rome from the Vicar, another in Codogno from Bishop Scalabrini , and even a farewell in Milan.

Then we left Italy and journeyed to Le Havre, France.

Le Havre was clogged with poor Italians leaving for the U.S.

Le Havre was clogged with poor Italians leaving for the U.S. Then we all boarded a steamer called the SS La Bourgogne.

Now I could say that we were finally a real missionary Order.

Sure, I was disappointed that we weren't going to China.

But I've got to tell you, I was excited to go to the United States, but I was most excited that we were going with the blessing of the Pope.

Now, this ship was big and we numbered about 1500 emigrants in all.

So we weighed anchor and we were on our way.

We sailed along the coast of France and out to the Atlantic.

I'm telling you, it was almost fun.

Besides, all of us Sisters were adults, so our bravery was understandable.

That was until we got out into the Atlantic.

And when we saw nothing around us, we started to cry like babies.

So much for being adults.

We had a pretty nice second class compartment.

But many of the Italian immigrants were in an area called steerage.

Do you know what steerage is?

It's like going across the ocean in a stable.

It's filthy.

It smells, and it's miserable.

So every day we used to visit and bring items that the emmigrants might need.

And then on March 31st, 1889, we saw her in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty.

I was so happy that I had all the Sisters sing the Ave Maris Stella.

And then I cried, but not for myself, But because I knew exactly what was in the minds of the emmigrants who left their home.

They were thinking, did they do the right thing?

Because remember, many of them had given up everything to leave Italy.

So for them, there was nothing to go back to.

I could go back.

They couldn't.

For them, it was the U.S. or bust.

So this statue, it was quite a welcoming site.

No, not welcoming.

That's the wrong word.

It was more like an encouraging statue.

It gave you the sense that when you landed on U.S. soil that you would move forward because the United States would be behind you.

Of course, that wasn't true.

The U.S. wasn't behind them.

Actually, the U.S. was ready to swallow them up and spit them out.

But that's what we Sisters were there for.

We would be behind them by opening them to God and easing their miseries.

And let me tell you, the immigrants went through great miseries in the United States.

You know, I was declared a saint, but some of those immigrants, how they gave their lives to make it easier for the next generation of Italian-Americans, they should have been made saints instead of me.

Anyway, our ship finally docked in Lower Manhattan and let off the steerage passengers at a place called Castle Garden.

Since another place called Ellis Island wouldn't be ready for another three years.

Then we disembarked and we were standing in New York City.

There were tons of people, and the prices of everything were at least double what it would cost in Italy.

And to make matters worse, I didn't understand English very well.

I mean, the Americans all sounded to me like geese.

And, you know, compared to the small town in Italy where I grew up, New York was like, well, I can't really describe it.

There were so many faces.

It was like an infinite sea of people, and it was downright scary.

But like we were promised, Scalabrini's priests were waiting for us.

And they took us to the basement of St. Joachim's Italian church in the Five Points area of Manhattan.

They had a welcome dinner for us.

All Italian food.

It was very nice.

So thank God things weren't looking too scary after all.

Eventually we were exhausted and we asked to be brought to our house and that's when we uncovered the first lie: there was no house for us.

It seems like Archbishop Corrigan and Scalabrini's priests, never got us any accommodations like they promised.

So instead they brought us to a nearby tenement in the Five Points area.

Now, do you know what Five Points was?

This was an area in Lower Manhattan.

And it was not only a densely populated slum, but it was disease ridden and had the worst crime.

In fact, there was at least one murder a night here.

So why was there so much crime?

Well, that's what you get with poverty.

Poverty brings desperation and desperation brings crime.

So this is where we had to spend our first night.

And as exhausted as we were, we didn't dare sleep.

We were too afraid.

Not so much because of the crime, but because of the dirty beds, the bedbugs, the rats and the roaches.

The next day, as tired as we were, we had to face some more lies.

Remember that school we were supposed to take over?

Well, there was no school yet.

And whatever building the school was supposed to be in, it still needed repairs before it could even be used.

So that we didn't waste any more time, we immediately planned to set up temporary classes in St. Joachim's church basement.

Then Scalabrini's priests exposed another lie.

They told us that there was no salary to pay us for our work in their school.

And then finally, the last lie just put the icing on the cake.

It was about the orphanage.

It seems that the benefactors for the orphanage were these upper Manhattan, wealthy Italian socialites, and they were paying for an orphanage to be placed in their wealthy neighborhood on 59th Street.

But check this out.

Archbishop Corrigan refused to have this orphanage built in this area.

And you know why?

Well, maybe it's because of two reasons: first, Corrigan probably didn't like poor orphans playing in the same upscale area as his newly built St Patrick's Cathedral at 51st Street.

But most likely, he was afraid of losing donation money.

Think about it.

Not only was a poor children's orphanage being built in this rich neighborhood, but worse, these poor children were from Italian families, and this would disgust the wealthy people living there and they would stop giving Corrigan donations.

So I met with Corrigan to find out what was going on.

And guess what he said to me?

He told me to go back to Italy.

Just like that.

No explanation.

I couldn't believe it.

Now, with a response like that, I should have gotten very anxious and had heart palpitations.

But instead I started to get mad.

I mean, wasn't it Corrigan that wrote to me asking us to come to the U.S. to run a school and start an orphanage?

So here we were, my Sisters and me, we're in this strange place in another part of the world where I can hardly understand what anyone is saying.

And even though I'm with supposed fellow Catholics, these Catholics were clearly not on our side either.

And it was then I realized why missions to other parts of the world are so difficult.

And that's because everyone has their own vested interest.

So we were totally alone.

And I had to accept that.

And I've got to tell you, yes, for a second I thought how nice and easy it would have been to get on the boat and go back to Italy, where I understood the language and where everything for me was clean and organized.

But then I remembered two things: first, I remembered that Christ is no different than a spouse.

If your spouse asks a favor from you, wouldn't you do all you can to make it work, no matter how much suffering you have to go through, right?

Well, Christ was my spouse and he was asking me to do this.

So, of course I had to make it work.

And the second thing I thought about was that there was no way I was going to make what the Italians call a Mala Figura That is, I was not going to lose face with Corrigan or anyone back in Italy showing them that I failed because I let someone push me around.

No way.

But instead of telling Corrigan any of this, first I just handed him papers showing him that the Pope wanted us to do this.

And then I told him, We've come here by order of the Holy See, and here we must stay.

So with my response, he was very annoyed so that he didn't make a Mala Figura with me, he tried to act like the boss by telling me that he would allow me to stay on condition that I forget about the orphanage and focus only on the school.

So even with his feeble attempt to make it look as though he was still in charge, it was very clear in my mind that I was now taking over.

Technically, like in Italy, I couldn't work against the wishes of the local Bishop.

But in this case I knew that I had a great advantage with my Order being under the direct control of the Pope and not Corrigan.

Plus, with the strength of my personality and my persistence mixed with a little humor, I knew I could persuade Corrigan to let me do what I wanted.

Anyway, the ball was now in my court and I was going to play the game my way.

And you know one other thing about Corrigan.

It's too bad his attitude was so poor because with it I heard he made enemies in Rome.

And maybe this is what ultimately prevented him from becoming a Cardinal.

Anyway, the next move I made was I had to make arrangements on where we were going to sleep that night.

I certainly wasn't bringing my Sisters back to Five Points.

And happily, the American Sisters of Charity, which was an Order started by Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton about 80 years before.

They gave us wonderful, clean room and board until we could find adequate housing.

The sad part about this is while my Sisters and I could get some clean accommodations, the rest of our fellow Italian immigrants had to stay in Five Points.

So that next Sunday we started our classes in the basement of St Joachim's Church.

Now, why didn't Italian kids just go to public schools?

Well, they did, but they weren't getting a good education.

Well, they did, but they weren't getting a good education.

And there were a couple of reasons for that: first of all, there were lots of immigrants pouring into northern cities like New York and Chicago.

So many of the classrooms were very overcrowded and the kids weren't getting the attention they needed.

Plus, many educators couldn't speak Italian, and worse, they were prejudiced against the immigrants.

Then when you add to this, the kids weren't being properly monitored at home or at the school, it's not difficult to see why truancy became the rule.

So this lack of proper education is always to be expected in poor communities.

And for some parents this was fine because as soon as a child could just barely read and write, they would yank their children out of school and send them to work.

And you know, at this time there were no child labor laws.

So many children ended up working in jobs that had very dangerous conditions where they would lose a limb or even lose their life.

So when these kids came to our school, we had to work hard to convince their parents to make sure that their kids stayed in school instead of being sent off to work in a thread mill.

I believe that no child under 15 should ever leave school for a job.

School should be their full time job.

So the bottom line was that Italian kids require their own schools and we designed the schools around what their needs were.

For instance, Bishop Scalabrini and I wanted a bilingual education, but Scalabrini wanted Italian to be the first language, and I disagreed with him.

These kids needed English most of all because the United States was now their country and they would eventually have to get jobs here.

Plus, I wanted these kids to learn English so they could show the U.S. they could assimilate, and that Italian immigrants were not dangerous, that these kids would actually make the U.S. richer and stronger.

On the other hand, I also wanted them to learn Italian because it would allow them to preserve their cultural heritage and let them distinguish themselves from the average American.

But, you know, the irony here was that these kids didn't really know Italian.

Many of the parents were usually peasants who had little to no education and spoke dialects, which in many cases couldn't even be considered Italian.

So these kids really needed to be taught proper Italian anyway.

You know, I really wanted these kids to assimilate in the worst way because the success of these kids, especially from southern Italy, would honor their mother country.

For example, successfully assimilated Sicilians can now show Italy they weren't the uncivilized, barbaric animals that Italy, especially after unification, made them out to be.

They were simply people caught up in poverty and needed opportunity.

So I can't stress this enough.

Creating a school that addressed their specific needs was key.

Now, you know, I wasn't the only one championing for better education and social programs for immigrants.

At the time, there was an American woman named Jane Addams, and she was also doing the same kind of social work for immigrants.

And get this, Addams did not like that educators like me were basing a school on a bilingual language.

She felt this did not help immigrant assimilation.

She even went so far as to start trashing our schools for being Catholic and too ethnic.

Well, after that, I simply dismissed her as a bigot.

You know, I wasn't interested in the U.S. being a melting pot where the immigrants would lose their identity.

I was interested in the U.S. being more like a salad bowl where cultural identities would be preserved.

Now, another thing I need to talk about is this: in addition to teaching, the 3Rs schools must also teach what I call an education of the heart, which starts with the teaching of morals and ethics.

And this is essential because you're not born knowing these values, and no kid should grow up without learning them.

Now, morals is teaching a kid the difference between right and wrong, while ethics is teaching them rules of behavior.

Now some ethics in our society are not necessarily moral.

For instance, if these kids don't get educated and they join a gang and the gang has a code of silence to protect their fellow gang members from the police, well, this code is known as an ethic.

Even though it's not moral.

So kids have to learn this.

Now, in a utopian society, it's the parents who are the ones who should be teaching the morals and ethics.

But it's unrealistic to expect the morals and ethics to stick if a child is away at school all day.

Plus, with the poor, many of them are ignorant.

And then add on top of that they're emotionally handicapped due to poverty.

So they may not be able to impart the proper morals and ethics to their kids.

And so the school has to fill in the gap.

Now, in a school like this, the education of the heart starts with the teacher.

So here are my teacher guidelines: first, the teacher has to run a clean and ordered classroom, and they have to be the primary role model because this is how a kid really learns.

Plus, the teacher who must teach for vocation and not for money, has to love the kids like they were their own children.

And this will give the kids confidence to do well.

Then the teacher also has to safeguard the children since they're on loan to us from their parents and they are God's creations.

Also, the teacher must not treat all the kids in the same way, since not all kids can do the same level of work.

Then if the child has failed a task, the teacher must not show dislike.

And certainly they must not embarrass the child.

Plus, the teacher should never speak of one student's deficiencies to other students.

Here's another important one.

Some children will misbehave and of course they will need to be disciplined.

But while you may be tempted to yell or hit the child, don't do it.

Punishment should never humiliate or ridicule because remember what we do to them, they will do to others.

Finally, our teachers all lived in the same communities where they taught.

This was important because this allowed us to experience the same social and political atmosphere of the students.

And in this way, the teacher was able to properly tailor the educational strategies to the needs of the children.

So a good education must consist of teaching the 3Rs, morals and ethics, and one other thing: God.

And if you don't teach about God, you're only giving the kids half an education.

If the school doesn't teach the kids about the existence of God, then it's hiding from them that there is a plane of reality, that while it may not be obvious to their five senses, it nonetheless exists.

And if the kids don't learn about God, they will miss out on how to tap into the spiritual side of life.

And what a shame for someone to grow up without that tool.

Students have to learn that they are nothing without God and that they need to implore the help of God to do good schoolwork and that they must work constantly towards being holy.

That is, their lives must be dedicated to God.

And it is the teacher by example that leads the students to this holiness.

I can't tell you how important school is.

To start a person's life off with a correct education is absolutely crucial.

And to deny a child the education that they need is criminal.

So anyway, we started classes a St Joachim's Church, but the air was very bad in the basement.

Unfortunately, it was the best we could do for the moment.

And true to form, Scalabrini's priests didn't provide any books, ink wells or pens.

Then the priests finally took us to see housing that they found for us.

Actually, the rooms were more like buchi, which in Italian means holes.

They were so small and the ceilings were so low that the priests had to take off their hats to enter.

So I refused this housing.

I figured if you're going to breathe bad air all day at the school, we might at least be able to go home to a room with some space and windows where we could breathe some fresh air.

So then they tried to find us other housing.

One place had lots of cheap rugs and tapestries.

Evidently, it must have been a brothel, because next door there was another brothel.

Needless to say, I refused that housing too.

The bottom line was that these priests could not get their act together.

In fact, things only started to get resolved after I complained to Scalabrini.

It's too bad it had to come to that.

So, in addition to teaching, we also began walking the Five Points Italian neighborhood, bringing food and clothing to the immigrants.

Italian neighborhood, bringing food and clothing to the immigrants.

We climbed up dangerous, narrow stairs.

We went down into dank, filthy basements.

I mean, we were going into places that the police were afraid to go into themselves.

You know, it's funny when Americans would ask the Italians why they would come to a very ugly and dangerous place like Five Points and leave the beauty of their Italian countryside behind, the Italians, without missing a beat, would say, Because you can't eat beauty.

So while we inspected the neighborhood, I noticed that there were different churches for Protestants and synagogues for Jews, and there were also Catholic churches, too.

But because these Catholic churches were prejudiced against Italians, they wouldn't allow Italian immigrants to enter.

So if Italians wanted to go to church, they needed to build their own churches.

But that wasn't going to happen because the Italian immigrants were poor and they had no money to make donations to build a church for themselves.

Now, the Pope knew this was happening and specifically asked the U.S. Bishops to have churches built for the Italians, anyway.

But the U.S. Bishops like Corrigan, just ignored him.

In fact, in response to the Pope, Corrigan made excuses, saying that for the last four years, if any Italians were interested in going to church, he had given them free use of the basement of Father Lynch's church.

And when Corrigan was asked why just the basement was available to the Italians, Corrigan said that these poor devils are not very clean so that the regular parishioners do not want to have them in the upstairs church otherwise the regulars will move out and then goodbye the income.

So, Scalabrini was right.

The Italians were not only repulsive to the Americans, but even repulsive to their fellow Catholics.

And because the Sisters and I were Italian, we were repulsive to them, too.

You know what they were calling the Italian immigrants?

Guinea pigs.

That is, we were black like Negroes from Guinea, and therefore we were to be treated like Black people.

And by the way, calling the Italians guineas really says a lot about how Black Americans were being treated.

Anyway, I immediately ordered new habits so that we would look more presentable.

Not that we were afraid to suffer, but I didn't want this prejudice to get in the way of our helping the Italian immigrants.

Now, this prejudice towards Italians existed simply because the Italians were the new poor immigrant group on the block.

And prejudice is a common sociological problem that has occurred throughout U.S. history.

And there is one major reason why prejudice happens, and this reason is: competition for jobs.

Let's go back about 100 years.

Now, before 1783, the 13 British colonies had mostly immigrants from England and therefore almost everyone practiced the Protestant religion of England, called Anglicanism.

At the time, of the two and a half million colonists, there were only 35,000 Catholics.

And Catholicism was not tolerated.

[BURNING] In fact, Catholics suffered higher taxation and some even lost their legal rights just for being Catholic.

And there were always fights between the Protestants and Catholics.

[YELLING, GUN FIRE] Some say it was due to religious differences, but another reason was that Protestants did not want to compete for jobs with these new Catholics.

Then, after the Revolutionary War, by 1791, [GUN FIRE, YELLING] the First Amendment established religious freedom.

And from 1830 through 1860, over three and a half million Irish, German and Chinese emigrated out of their countries because of various reasons like political unrest, severe unemployment and famine.

Now, why did these immigrants choose to come to the U.S. instead of another country?

Well, because there were many jobs here, and that was because the U.S. had slavery and therefore cotton was produced very cheaply and in huge quantities.

And around 1800, because of the invention of the cotton gin and steam engine.

Cotton textiles went from hand production to machine production.

And this started the Industrial Revolution.

Textiles are now being mass produced in northeastern U.S. cities.

And now there were lots of low skilled jobs available.

Then because of the railroad and availability of coal, iron and limestone from places like Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan, these helped produce steel, and that meant even more jobs were available in those areas too.

[STREETCAR BELL CLANG] These super wealthy cities, then started to build roads, sewers, canals and skyscrapers, which created even more work.

So, all of this now added up to a country that had an incredible amount of available, low skilled jobs.

And this was perfect for these immigrants because they didn't need any schooling to do this work.

But while these new immigrants flooded into the U.S. the rest of the population was prejudiced because they didn't want to compete with them.

I mean, the native population was always prejudiced, making some excuse like the immigrants are bringing disease or the wrong religion.

But the prejudice was really about competition for jobs.

The phobias against these groups generated such hatred that it sometimes ended in the death of some of the immigrants.

For instance, in 1871 in Los Angeles, Sinophobia resulted in the lynching of 18 Chinese immigrant men.

Meanwhile, in Italy, poverty got worse after Unification.

Due to neglect from the government, there was much less work, especially for southern Italians.

So Italians had to flee Italy to find jobs elsewhere.

And from 1880 to 1890, Italians emigrated to places like the U.S. and South America.

In fact, over 300,000 came to the United States alone.

And when the Italians got to the U.S., they experienced the same type of prejudice that the Chinese, the Irish and the Germans had faced.

For instance, in New York, Irish assimilation was now well under way, since at this point the Irish were now in control of city politics.

And you would think that the Irish who themselves suffered prejudice would have had empathy for the Italians.

But it was just the opposite.

There was no way the Irish were going to allow the Italians to start taking jobs away from them.

And even though the Irish were Catholic too, it didn't matter, they were still prejudiced against the Italians.

For instance, one time we tried to get into Corrigan's St Patrick's Cathedral, which was an Irish church, but St. Patrick's was charging admission.

Now, why would a church charge admission?

Well, because the parishioners knew that this would keep out the poor Italians.

Anyway, as you can see, the poor immigrants needed a lot of help from us, not just with schools not just with schools for their kids and access to churches, but they also needed a ton of social services from us.

And you know, as much as they needed our help, many times, believe it or not, they didn't want it.

Now, why was that?

Well, to understand why, first we have to split the Italian immigrants into two groups: the immigrants that came from this upper part of Italy were known as the northern Italian immigrants.

Now, many of them had some education and were level headed, and so they responded well to our help.

But then there were the southern Italians, and these people made up the bulk of the Italian immigrants coming to the U.S. Now, the southern Italians were very ignorant and the reason was because they were peasants and they had no education.

And as a result they were very mistrustful about everything and everyone, including the Sisters.

But they desperately needed our help in things like learning the basics of good hygiene, you know, stuff like how to keep your body and your living space clean.

And they also needed to learn English, which by the way, many of them refused to do because they came to the U.S. with a delusion that they were going to make a lot of money quickly and then go back to Italy.

We would also teach the women skills like needlework, so that they could make some extra money.

And we also taught them how to manage and save their money.

We also found out that some couples with children were not married, and so we worked to get them married in a church so that they would treat their relationship as the holy sacrament that it's supposed to be.

And speaking about holy sacraments, most of the immigrants considered themselves Catholic, but some did not practice because they said that with the constant work they had to do, they didn't have the time to go to church.

So we tried to make Masses available to suit their schedule and many other immigrants.

In addition to not knowing the Gospels, their lives were filled with superstitions.

They were using objects and practices as though they had some kind of supernatural power that could bring them money or give them power over others or save them from hell.

So in addition to teaching them the correct catechism, we also had to teach them that believing in superstitions is not compatible with believing in God, and that religious objects were only to be used just as reminders to live your life in total obedience to God.

All right.

Next.

Let's talk about jobs.

Jobs are the key to assimilation.

Remember, if a group cannot go out and make enough money to pay for political representation then the political structure will ignore them, and this will prevent their efforts in climbing the American ladder of success.

Now, the Italian immigrants came to the U.S. with four strikes against them: first of all, they did not know the language.

Second, they had practically no money.

Third, most had no education.

And fourth, they were desperate for any job they could get.

And therefore their bosses took advantage of them, making them work around the clock in horrendous, dangerous conditions for very little pay.

But the disgraceful part was that the labor brokers who obtained these immigrants for these bosses were Italian men themselves, and they were called padroni.

Here's the problem.

The Italian immigrant would arrive ignorant and completely confused, and then they would put their money and their trust into these padroni.

What do they get in return?

Bad jobs and terrible living conditions.

So we were there to protect the immigrants from this system and help them get good jobs.

But many of these Italian men, even if they were working, sometimes they still didn't make enough money to support their families.

And often in poor communities, this inability to support their families would cause some men to become embarrassed, feel inadequate, and some would desert their families.

Others would become depressed.

And then they might turn to drinking to ease their depression.

And since alcohol causes aggression, some of these men would become violent and fight.

Some would even turn to crime.

And then, of course, they would get arrested and go to jail.

So we also had to begin social programs to help them get lawyers.

And the Sisters would then act as their interpreters.

Now, if the family lost the father because of desertion or jail or if the father died in an accident at the job, which by the way, happened frequently to those that worked in the coal mines and now the kids couldn't be supported anymore, then some parents would simply abandon their children to the streets.

So another major goal of ours was to create orphanages for the Italian kids.

Okay, so on with my story.

Now, remember that Corrigan had told me that I should only focus on the school and not the orphanage.

I should only focus on the school and not the orphanage.

Well, I ignored him and met anyway with the wealthy couple who were going to donate the money for the orphanage.

The couple was an American woman named Mary Reid, who married an Italian count named Luigi Palma di Cesnola.

So I visited with them because I had to thank them for their generous patronage.

You know, many religious works require patrons.

Just think about how some of the gospels might not have been written if the writers weren't patronized.

Even Jesus, in order to go out with his 12 apostles, his preaching required the support of wealthy women patrons like Mary, Joanna and Susanna.

You know, while you're doing good works, the money for food and clothing has to come from somewhere.

Right?

Well, anyway, I visited with my patrons and we got down to business and we decided to visit with Corrigan and get him to reconsider the orphanage idea.

Now, Corrigan was a very argumentative and uncooperative man, but Mary Reid didn't care.

She actually got down on her knees and begged Corrigan to reconsider.

And then Corrigan actually okayed the project.

But then Corrigan had to spoil it all by adding that he would allow the opening of the orphanage only on the condition that if we needed more money in the future, that we could only get it from the Italian immigrants.

No one else.

Now, what good would that do Me?

But I asked him anyway, keeping a mental reservation that if I couldn't raise enough money with the Italians, then against his wishes, I would seek other donors.

Okay, so in 1889 we opened the orphanage, which now also housed our convent.

And the Sisters and I moved up to the very wealthy East Side neighborhood of 59th Street.

So with the orphanage established, we now went out to find our orphans.

And in New York, there was no La Ruota degli Esposti like there is in Italy.

To get orphans now, we went down to Five Points and we walked around and literally picked girls up off the streets.

And in just a few months, it wasn't difficult to collect 400 young girls.

The sad part is, when the orphanage was full, there were still plenty of kids that we had to leave on the streets.

And after these kids got to the orphanage, the girls went from this... to this.

Isn't that much better?

Now, these kids had a better shot at a successful future.

And why did this success happen?

Because everything around them was now based on that crucifix on the wall.

So let me talk about why we're so serious about taking care of these children.

An orphanage is really no more than a boarding school for kids.

And the kids live here because they either don't have a home to go back to or they're from such a dysfunctional family and neighborhood that they need this environment to grow up properly.

These girls, besides getting free room and board and an education, also received a massive amount of hugs and kisses from the Sisters.

You know, kids need tons of affection to get the confidence to grow up properly.

So we had to give it to them.

Who else were they going to get it from?

We had to be their loving family.

There was no other way.

Right?

We also instructed these girls in domestic chores, you know, like embroidery and mending, cooking and serving, because we wanted to make sure that when they came of age that these girls could go out and make a decent living.

And we also saw to it that they were placed into service jobs with respectable families.

Now, this is important.

We weren't just some jobs training institute.

We were also about employment.

You know, a jobs training program that does not get its graduates employed is not much of a program.

Now, what would happen to these kids if we didn't do this work?

Well, let's talk about the boys.

If a boy isn't privileged enough to come from a good home and doesn't grow up with the basic elements of food, water, security and affection, he may resort to crime.

When a girl doesn't get these elements either, what do you think will happen to her?

Well, in the 1890s, since there were very few options for her to work, if a poor girl didn't marry, she may have turned to prostitution.

And this isn't because she's looking for sexual gratification.

She does this because she needs the money.

You know, if the Church is as serious about poverty, as it claims to be, the Church should be committed to keeping Catholic schools open regardless if the communities can pay tuition or are even Catholic themselves.

The bottom line is that Catholic schools are essential in poor areas.

Okay.

So as expected, with the needs of 400 girls and nine Sisters, we burned through our initial money very quickly.

[BURNING] Yes, we could go begging from door to door, which we did, but we couldn't rely on anything like that.

We needed big money.

So we asked Corrigan for a list of potential donors.

And as you can expect, he refused to give us that list, reminding us that we were only allowed to solicit donations from the Italian community.

Well, I blew past this and went to the Franciscans and then to the Jesuits to get their donor list.

But none of those orders would turn over their list to us either.

So I had an idea.

You know, the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Well, my patron, Cesnola was the museum's first director.

So I asked him for the museum's donors list.

And you know what?

He gave it to me.

Can you believe that?

And you should believe it, because since the museum had to list their donors on their tax returns, this donors list was now public knowledge anyway.

And then I gave the list to one of the Sisters, and she started to call everyone on the list for a donation.

At one point, we even started making lists of the business tycoons.

Here's a note I wrote to one of the Sisters: Don't you know the Mr. Carnegie, who gave 30 million for the University of California?

They say that he still has many millions and that he wishes to give it all to charity, especially for education.

So look him up and see if he would give us a million.

We would certainly know where to use it.

Okay.

Next thing.

I was finding that getting, every day, from the 59th Street orphanage to the Saint Joachim's school in Five Points was too long a commute.

So I set up a house near St. Joachim's so some of the Sisters could live closer to the school.

And since only nine of us were caring for over 400 kids, I immediately sent for nine more Sisters from Italy.

Now, since the bulk of my Sisters were in Italy, I needed to have some face time with them.

So I got on a steamer and went back to Italy.

And this was actually good for me.

You know, working on the New York City projects was tough.

I mean, between the priests and Corrigan and the ignorance of the immigrants and the never ending battle to find money, it really took a toll on my health.

So with a trans-Atlantic trip that took almost a week, it gave me time to relax and get my health back.

And when I got to Italy, I was refreshed, checked in on all my houses in Lombardy and in Rome, and I got to pray with the Sisters.

It was great.

And then I got on a steamer and went back to New York.

So with another week of downtime on the boat, I began plotting my next move, which was to move the 59th Street orphanage to a better location.

So when I got back, the first thing I did was buy up a property in upstate New York.

You see, the Jesuits were selling the land cheap because they couldn't find any more water on the property.

But having faith in God, I walked the property looking for a new well.

Then I pointed to where I thought the water might be found.

The workers drilled and eccola We hit water.

See?

I told you.

Just have faith in the Lord.

It always works.

Am I right?

[WATER] And our new orphanage?

What a location!

Upper New York, along the Hudson River.

It's exactly what I had wanted for these girls.

Lots of land to play.

And most of all, plenty of fresh air.

I loved it so much that I even made my first United States novitiate there.

And of course, Archbishop Corrigan was so happy to see that the orphanage was moved out of his wealthy 59th Street neighborhood.

Now, since I was already able to get money and bring these large projects to fruition, I became very sought after.

For instance, the New York Italian Hospital asked me to take over as CEO, but I rejected their offer.

And here's why.

but I rejected their offer.

And here's why.

When I visited the hospital, they were celebrating the 20th of September, and this celebration commemorates the final event of Italian Unification, [GUN FIRE, YELLING] when in 1870 Rome was captured and became the capital of Italy.

But this same day is also when the Pope lost his power over Rome.

So if this hospital was celebrating this festival, this meant that they were anti-clerical and therefore I didn't want anything to do with them.

Then in 1891, Bishops Corrigan and Scalabrini asked me to help them save their failing New York hospital, which was run by Scalabrini's priests.

They had named their hospital Columbus Hospital, to make the Italian immigrants feel proud.

Now, this wasn't the first time I helped Scalabrini with a hospital.

If you remember, I had already successfully saved one of his failing hospitals in Italy.

So now I had to raise the funds to save his Columbus Hospital in New York.

And as much as I wanted to do this, I didn't like getting money for a project that I wasn't controlling.

Plus, I didn't want to go in on another project with Scalabrini's scatterbrain priests.

They were lazy and they were bad administrators.

I mean, don't you remember?

They never got us good housing.

Their St. Joachim's school was lacking in books and pens.

And they never gave the Sisters any salaries for teaching.

So I was going to decline taking over Columbus Hospital.

But then I knew how vital it was for Italian immigrants to have their own hospital.

You know, people would always say, Why don't the Italians just go to a public hospital like everyone else?

Well, because of prejudice, it was hard for them to get served properly.

Plus, since the immigrants and the doctors didn't understand each other's language, this prevented the doctors from giving the Italians the correct treatment.

And then add to that, the Italians didn't have the money for medications.

So Columbus Hospital had to stay open.

But was I the one to keep it open?

And obviously the answer was yes, because at this point I couldn't deny it.

God was certainly announcing this need loud and clear to me.

So I put aside my reservations towards Scalabrini's priests, and when I got to Columbus Hospital, I saw that the place was falling apart physically and financially.

[GLASS SHATTERS] So I bounced into gear and started to find the money to save their hospital.

But then, can you believe it?

Scalabrini's priests resented what I was doing.

They were actually jealous of my success, and they certainly didn't like being indebted to a woman.

So they started to become very counterproductive.

I could see at this moment that no matter how hard I tried, the hospital was a train wreck waiting to happen.

[CRASH] But I hoped for the best and went on to my other projects.

Now, while I was in New York, I had met a wealthy Nicaraguan woman, Dona Elena Arellano, who wanted me to open a Catholic school for wealthy girls in Nicaragua.

And I immediately accepted this because I saw it as a way to establish a mission in South America.

But before I could do this, I had to get on the boat and go back to Rome and get approval from the Pope, which I got.

So I picked up 29 more Sisters, got on the boat again and sailed back to New York.

When I got to New York, I dropped off 15 Sisters and took the rest to Nicaragua.

When we got to Nicaragua, we were given a dinner.

But the custom of the servant women was to go topless.

Now I realized that I have to be open minded and respect certain customs, but this practice was immoral.

So I announced that I would not eat anything until the serving women had covered themselves.

And happily, my wishes were respected.

But some time after some of my wishes were not respected.

Let me tell you about one scary incident.

Now in this area of the world.

Having a child born out of wedlock was acceptable, and at the school we started called La Inmaculada, one of the girls was born out of wedlock.

So we rejected her application.

And the girl's father, who was a member of the aristocracy, he got a mob together and began to stone our convent for many nights.

At first I was afraid, [STONING] but then I became joyful at the idea that I might be martyred.

But after a couple of nights of the stoning, the father eventually stopped and respected our decision.

Okay, so by 1891, MSC had missions in Italy, the United States, and now one in South America.

And they all had the same strategy: I would plant the seed.

I would make sure all the moneys and contracts were in order.

I would get some Sisters to take it over and then I would move on to the next project.

But let me make four important points here.

The first point is, if you become aware that your help is needed, it's because God has put this idea into your head.

Do not be proud and take credit for it.

Second, because God has presented this project to you, no matter how difficult it may seem to be, you must not ignore it.

You've got to go for it.

Third, I found that the decisions to start the projects all had to be made quickly otherwise, the opportunity would be lost.

And the last is that money should never be part of the decision.

I mean, it was never part of my decisions since I never had enough money to start a project to begin with.

My projects were all the same.

They were like airplanes that were being built as they raced down the runway ready to take off.

Okay.

So in 1892, after about six months of work, my job in Nicaragua was done and I left.

So while sailing from South America back to New York, I stopped off in New Orleans.

Since the NOLA Archbishop had asked me to open a school.

When I got there, I witnessed Italian immigrants that were completely demoralized.

And this was due to murders that had happened back in March of 1891.

You see, there were two rival families in NOLA that were trying to get control of unloading the fruits on the New Orleans docks.

They were the two Sicilian families, the Matrangas and the Provenzanos.

Now, the chief of NOLA's police, David Hennessy, He was friendly to the Provenzano family and was obstructing efforts of the Matrangas.

So Hennessy was killed and Italians friendly to the Matranga family were arrested for the crime, but later were acquitted.

And so in March of 1891, the mayor of NOLA became outraged over the acquittal and incited a mob telling them to teach these Sicilian Mafiosi a lesson they will never forget.

And so the mob broke into the jail, shot some of the men and dragged the rest out and lynched them on lampposts.

So after these 11 murders, the Italians in New Orleans were living in fear that they were now being abandoned by the law.

And then, since Italy was so outraged at these lynchings, U.S. President Harrison, in order to smooth relations, decided not only to give the families of the men who were killed $25,000 each, but he wanted to create a holiday for the Italian immigrants.

So since it was 1892, he called the holiday Columbus Day.

Since 1892 was the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landing in America.

So Columbus Day gave the Italian immigrants a boost in morale that the U.S. was not abandoning them.

And that became my goal, too.

I wasn't in New Orleans just to start a school, but I had to bring support to people who felt they had been abandoned.

And part of that support included visiting prisons, not just in New Orleans, but anywhere in the U.S. where MSC had a house.

Now, remember, some Italians, particularly those Southerners from Sicily and Calabria who operated within organized crime families, they were legitimately arrested for crimes, but others that landed in prison were wrongfully accused and sent behind bars simply because of prejudice.

But whoever they were, my goal was to visit and attend to them because they needed our presence, especially since we could speak their language.

For instance, at the Tombs and Sing Sing prisons in New York, we would teach the inmates about God and keep them company to lift their spirits.

You know, within the Italian culture, when a man goes to prison, he brings shame to his family, and sometimes the family does not visit him.

And this takes a psychological toll on the prisoner.

So we try to get the family back together.

We also took great care to visit those on death row.

Now, death row is a horrific place.

This is not like visiting the terminally ill.

These are healthy people who are many times placed in inhumane conditions.

They will also at some point encounter another human who will take their life.

And so the Sisters try to prepare them for their death.

In some instances, I was actually able to get someone off death row.

Anyway, capital punishment is wrong, and I know for a fact that God does not want us to play God like this.

So finally, when I got back [GLASS SHATTERS] to New York, I found Columbus Hospital in disarray again.

While I was away, the priests had made a mess of the finances.

So I asked the board that the hospital be turned over to my sole direction.

And with this, the priests took me to court saying that I was trying to use the hospital to amass money for myself and my Order.

Wow.

What a fiasco.

I tell you, I felt like Dr. Stockmann from the 1882 Ibsen play An Enemy of the People.

And so I resigned.

And this closed the curtain on that hospital.

And by the way, I also pulled the Sisters out of St. Joachim's school.

I just didn't want to be tied to Scalabrini's priests anymore.

But what do I do about the hospital?

I mean, the immigrants still needed one desperately, and I couldn't ignore God's wishes.

So I went to see Corrigan and begged him to allow me to start a new Columbus Hospital.

And he agreed.

So I began getting donations from rich Catholics, and I found another building to buy.

And then I got everything else donated: the ambulances, the medicines, everything.

I even got a nearby restaurant to make Italian food for the patients.

I tell you, when you're sick in bed, there's nothing like getting brought up to you, a nice hot dish of fresh pasta.

Then we got some excellent doctors to sign on.

In fact, we had some of the finest men in New York serving in our hospital.

And many of these doctors put in their own money and their own equipment to get the hospital up and running.

And do you know why they did that?

Because of that cross on the wall .

In this hospital, the patients were not just taken care of, they were loved.

And even though many Sisters were not formally trained, they quickly became experts in dispensing medications and assisting the doctors.

Wherever more expertise was needed, we hired professional nurses.

In fact, I saw to it that all our hospitals eventually had their own nursing schools.

But I've got to tell you, I really wanted the Sisters to do the bulk of the work because not only was their labor free, but I could trust that their efforts to alleviate suffering would go way beyond what any lay person would have been willing to do.

You have no idea what tasks the Sisters would perform.

They will do the most disgusting, menial, repetitive, exhausting task.

And not only will they do it with a smile, but while they're doing it, they are thanking God for allowing them to do it.

You know, if you want to know what God really looks like, just look at our Sisters.

So the hospital just took off and nearly immediately we started to outgrow the first building.

So we left the old building and I bought a bigger place.

In fact, one year, there was a bank failure.

So with the real estate market depressed, I jumped on the opportunity to snap up the land next to the hospital so that we could expand.

At this point I had now become a developer.

The only difference was I wasn't working for profit, I was working for God.

But no sooner had we finished the expansion that the hospital had to be enlarged again and by 1903 we were treating 5000 people a year and by 1909 we were treating 40% of all the Italian immigrants in New York City.

But you know what became the most important part of the hospital?

It was the dispensary.

We found that most patients didn't really need to occupy a bed, but they did need things like crutches and medications.

And those weren't the only things we dispensed.

We also gave out food and clothing to the poor, too.

Does your hospital do that?

Ours did.

It had to.

So finally, in 1892, with things under control, I went back to Italy again to check on my houses and visit with the Pope.

Then I got a cable telling me that the Nicaraguan government had been overthrown and the new regime expelled my Sisters from the country.

So I wrote back to the Sisters and told them to take refuge in Panama with a Bishop I knew.

Then the new regime invited MSC back into Nicaragua, but I refused.

After that, in September of 1894, I went back to New York.

As soon as I landed, Archbishop Corrigan talked to me about a serious problem.

He said that the Italian Americans and the Italian priests were up in arms over my hospital activities.

What he really meant to say was that I was cutting in on their donations.

So Corrigan asked that my Order give up the hospital, and that we leave New York.

Well, here we go again.

I'm telling you, I wasn't going to let these men bully me.

And, you know, my response to them was, I got more donations and I bought up more property to enlarge Columbus Hospital.

Anyway, in 1895, I traveled to Buenos Aires.

But check out how I got there.

But check out how I got there.

First I went down to Panama, where I picked up one of the Sisters.

[FOGHORN] Then I wanted to see the west coast of South America, where I took a boat down to Peru and made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Rose of Lima.

Then we sailed to Valparaiso, Chile.

Where to get to Buenos Aires, we crossed over the Andes Mountains by mule.

Wow!

Let me tell you, that was some journey.

But we finally got to Buenos Aires, where we set up a school.

And even though it was mostly for tuition paying wealthy kids, I figured it would give MSC a foothold in Argentina so that in the future we could start projects just for the poor.

So do you see a pattern here?

What we did is successfully bring large projects to fruition, and then others began to want our services.

Now, with this credibility, I could then open projects specifically for the poor, like orphanages and schools, and these schools would be free.

We gave the kids everything: the pencils, the books, even their meals, whatever they needed.

Now, while this seemed like a huge financial burden for my mission, in actuality, the money to pay for the free schools came from the tuition we got from the wealthy schools.

Wasn't that a good idea?

You know, since the wealthy were so blessed with lots of money, they should have been thanking God that it was being used for such good works.

Right?

So anyway, once Argentina was set up, then in 1896, I wanted to go over to Europe to create missions in France, England and Spain.

But then something came up that derailed me for two years.

You see, in Italy there was another Order of religious women called the Ursulines, and they were suing MSC over a money matter.

And since the Bishop from Lodi was siding with the Ursulines, the lawsuit was disintegrating the credibility of my Order.

[GLASS SHATTERS] So for the next two years, I rolled up my sleeves and worked hard on this case because I needed to reestablish the reputation of my Order, especially with the clergy in Rome.

Then I gathered witnesses and directed the defense, and we won the case.

So with this lawsuit off my shoulders in 1898, I went to France and started a new house there.

Then in 1899 I returned to the U.S. and started more houses and schools in Chicago, Illinois, Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Newark, New Jersey.

And in the same year, I went over to Spain and started a new house and orphanage.

And after that it was back to Italy to open more houses and visit the Pope.

In 1900, I went over to South America, but my health was failing.

So I went back to Italy, where it took me about seven months of bed rest to recuperate.

And after I felt well enough, I went over to Spain, then France, and started a new house in England.

And then in 1902 it was back to the U.S. First I stopped off in New York to check up on all the projects in that area.

And then I went out to Denver, Colorado, because of all the problems the Italian immigrants were having out there.

Now, Denver was like Scranton, Pennsylvania.

It was a disaster for the Italian immigrants because the chief occupation for the Italian men was coal mining.

And what does coal mining bring?

Well, it brings a lot of money for the owners of the mines, but it brings death to the workers.

Besides diseases like black lung, there are constantly coal mine accidents.

And when a family loses the father, you lose the breadwinner and then the family can't take care of the kids.

So besides schools, we had to establish orphanages, too.

But another mission was also to visit the mine workers.

And to do that, our Sisters would crowd into a small cage, which would be sent down a small hole about a square meter wide that was cut into the rock.

And then we were lowered hundreds of feet down to the mine.

The mine was so deep that there was no breathable air at the bottom.

So air has to be constantly pumped down into the mine.

And when the Sisters got down there, they found it was still hard to breathe, but they would walk several miles through the dark tunnels, giving comfort to these poor men and sometimes young boys.

And the only light in these small shafts was from a few oil lamps hung on the men's caps.

It's not a difficult leap of the imagination to make an allusion to hell.

Meanwhile, in 1903, I sent word to my Sisters in Argentina to set up a school in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Okay.

[TRAIN WHISTLE] From Denver, I was off to New York to enlarge Columbus Hospital again by buying some properties next to it.

Then it was over to Passaic, New Jersey, to start another orphanage.

Then Chicago asked me to build a hospital in their city.

So I went over to Chicago and bought up a 150 room hotel to convert into another Columbus Hospital.

I also purchased the adjacent land, but I found out the seller was cheating me out of some acreage.

So I went with a tape measure myself and measured out the correct plot.

Then we signed the deed and started to build.

Unfortunately, this hospital was treating mostly paying customers, but in the back of my mind, I was waiting for the opportunity to use the money from this paying hospital to set up a free hospital.

So that was all good.

But then 1903 was also a sad year because my friend Pope Leo died and I couldn't attend the funeral.

Then I went out to Seattle to enlarge an existing school, and I built a church for the immigrants.

And then I stopped off at Denver again to check on things.

Around 1904, I hopped on a train to New Orleans.

At some point during the train ride, someone sprayed our train car with gunfire, and the window that I was sitting near was shattered.

[GUN FIRE, GLASS SHATTERS] But I got down to New Orleans in one piece and I saw that the orphanage needed to be enlarged.

So I immediately went out to look for donors.

And then I left for Chicago.

But after I left, New Orleans got hit hard with yellow fever.

Now, yellow fever is a viral disease found in humans in the tropics, [MOSQUITO BUZZ] and it is mainly transmitted to other humans by mosquitoes.

So when ships come in from tropical places like South America or Africa, especially during the hot summer months, the ships would bring these mosquitoes.

Then the dock workers unloading the ships would get bitten by mosquitoes and get infected with the virus.

Now, many of the immigrants who worked the docks were Sicilian, so it was in the little Palermo section of New Orleans that really got hit the hardest by the yellow fever epidemic.

Now, once the mosquito infects the dock worker with the virus, the virus multiplies and begins to damage the body.

Meanwhile, the body's white blood cells try to kill off the cells that have been infected by the virus.

And during this battle, the dock worker develops fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains and headaches.

Then after five days, the dock worker improves.

And for the lucky ones, they recover.

But for the unlucky ones, the fever comes back.

They get abdominal pains.

And this is when the virus is destroying the liver.

And it's the destruction of the liver that causes the skin to become yellow and also disrupts blood clotting.

So eventually the dock worker will start to bleed through their eyes, nose and ears.

The death rate was around 50%.

Now, remember, while the dock worker is sick, if a mosquito bites him and picks up the virus, then this mosquito can now transmit the virus to the rest of the family.

So, of course, the big issue in visiting the dock worker families was that we thought we might catch the disease ourselves.

So I thought it was only fair to ask the Sisters first if they were willing to die for this mission.

And of course, they were.

Actually, many times we were the only ones who were allowed to go into the homes since the Italians refused help from the health officials saying the doctors were going to poison them.

So eventually the doctors gave the medicines to the Sisters and entrusted them to enter the homes to give the treatments to the sick.

But when we first entered, the immigrants thought our Sisters were spies of the doctors, and they thought the Sisters were going to poison them, too.

So the Sisters had to take the medicine first to show it was safe.

But really, there was little our Sisters could do except make the last moments of the patients as comfortable as possible.

In one case, a young mother who was dying, whose husband had died the day before, she begged the Sisters to take her three little girls.

The mother told the Sisters, It's so hard to die and leave my babies all alone.

But the Sisters promised her that her children would all be loved and cared for.

So the mother smiled and said, My God, I thank you.

And then she died.

Of course, because of these deaths, we got many orphans.

So yellow fever was bad.

But you know what was worse?

It was that the New Orleans business community squashed the political leaders from letting people know the extent of the disease, so that it wouldn't create fear and affect the New Orleans businesses.

In fact, when our Sisters suspected that yellow fever was developing in the community, they were told to shut their mouths, otherwise they would be killed.

And of course, this greed was quite disastrous because instead of the government imposing a quarantine, the Italian dock workers were allowed to work and so many were infected and died unnecessarily.

And let me point out something else here.

It should be no surprise to anyone that typically the people always hit hardest by disease are the poor communities, since they always have the least political power.

Fortunately, scientists had discovered as early as 1900 that mosquitoes were the vectors for yellow fever.

So by 1905, by draining wet areas and using insecticides, authorities began to take steps to eradicate the mosquitoes and their breeding grounds.

But when authorities used fumigation on the houses of the immigrants, the ignorant ones wouldn't let them into their homes thinking the fumigation would suffocate them.

So to set a role model, the Sisters invited everyone to the convent and made a show of having the convent fumigated to demonstrate that it was safe.

And when the immigrants saw this, they finally let in the authorities to fumigate their homes.

Anyway, remember that I was going back to Chicago?

Well, the reason was because the Chicago Hospital construction was in trouble.

When I got there, I found out that the contractors were stealing When I got there, I found out that the contractors were stealing all the materials.

So I fired everyone and I took them all to court.

Then we resumed construction.

But this time I stayed at the job site and I directed things until the place got finished.

That's me in the photo on opening day.

Now, while I was in Chicago, word got back to me that a group of my Sisters in my Rome house didn't like some of my disciplinary rules.

Instead of taking the traditional route of talking it out face to face with me, the Sisters complained directly to the Vatican.

Now, while the issue was ruled in my favor, this example shows that when many people are living with one another in the same place, that there will always arise vain, frivolous personalities that will try to disrupt the community.

Yes, you have to be very patient with them, but at the same time you must enforce obedience, even if that requires an angry reprimand or worse, you must ask them to leave, otherwise you will lose the house.

In the same year it was on to Los Angeles to establish another house, school, and orphanage.

The interesting thing about L.A. was while there were plenty of poor Italians, there were far more poor Mexicans.

So automatically my efforts were for their benefit, too.

Also, in nearby Santa Monica, we opened a sanatorium for kids with tuberculosis.

Then in 1906 I went back to Italy.

And in 1908, while I was down in Brazil, I started a school in Rio de Janeiro.

Then in 1909, it was back to the U.S. and out to Seattle, where I became a U.S. citizen.

Now, I didn't become a citizen to show solidarity with the Italian immigrants.

I did it because with the millions of dollars of U.S. development I accomplished, becoming, a U.S. citizen, made it legally easier in the future to transfer ownership of those properties from my name to the Order.

Okay, back to Chicago.

Now, remember I said that the hospital was treating paying customers?

Well, Chicago's Archbishop finally saw the light on this and gave me the thumbs up to create a second Columbus Hospital that was free for poor Italian immigrants.

So I immediately picked out the new location.

But the neighbors in the area did not want a poor immigrants' hospital near them.

So while the hospital was being built, the neighbors tried to sabotage the project by flooding the job site.

[WATER BUBBLING] And after we got that cleaned up, they set fire to the construction.

[BURNING] But eventually we got over those hurdles and the hospital got underway.

And then in 1910, I was 60 years old.

And the decades of establishing houses, schools, orphanages and hospitals in many countries was starting to take a big toll on my health.

So just in case anything happened to me, I went back to Italy to put someone else in charge as Superior General.

But when it came time to vote for the new Superior, the Order overwhelmingly voted me back in.

And this time they voted me in as Superior General for life.

Even the new Pope, Pius X signed the decree.

I also felt at this point that I needed to take off the developer hat, slow down and start living more of a contemplative religious life.

You know, focus more on God through prayer, and also I wanted to write down my thoughts so that the Sisters could use them.

But you know what?

As my health got better, I found that I didn't want to be contemplative.

So I put my developer hat back on and went out on the road again.

First I went out to France to start another house, and then it was over to England to open a school.

But I went back to Italy because I was feeling sick and decided to prepare for my death.

So first I straightened out my archives and I even asked to see Tondini.

Remember her?

She started the House of Providence.

Well, I was able to meet with her and I asked her to forgive me for any pain I caused her.

Then in 1912, when I felt somewhat better, I decided to leave Italy for the U.S. Of course I didn't realize it, but it was the last time I would see Italy.

When I got to New York, I immediately went to Philadelphia to start another school.

Then I returned to New York, put my developer hat back on, and spent an enormous amount of time on plans to modernize the New York Columbus Hospital, the way I modernized Chicago's Columbus Hospital.

In fact, you should have seen the Chicago Hospital.

We had it all.

We had an obstetrics department, elevators, wards just for children, a steam laundry and even an operating room that had seats so visiting doctors could observe the operations.

You know, all of that takes a lot of planning and a lot of money.

But as usual, I was never worried about the money.

There were always plenty of wealthy people around and God would always help me find them.

And when I found them, I would tell them that they should feel lucky.

God had sent me to get their charity.

At some point I took a break from the New York Hospital planning and went out to Los Angeles.

But on the way I got so sick that I had to stop off in Denver to rest.

After I recovered, it was over to L.A. to oversee plans to enlarge a school.

Then it was up to Seattle, where I had to move the orphanage to a new property.

And in 1913 I went back to New York to move the Hudson River orphanage closer to Manhattan.

Then, when 1914 rolled around, since my U.S. institute was now 25 years old, we had a big party at this new orphanage.

This is me at the party.

And congratulations came in from all over the world, including the Pope.

And I have to tell you, I arranged the party myself.

And you know why I did that?

Because I wanted to make sure the event went smoothly.

You see, the press was there, but also some powerful people from Washington were going to be there.

And I wanted to hit them all up for a donation.

Hey I wasn't going to lose this opportunity, would you?

So it was a pretty happy time.

But sadly, in 1914, World War I broke out [YELLING, GUN FIRE, EXPLOSIONS] and that really sucked the life out of me.

All that greed for war, all that death.

Imagine if all that money and effort were put into reducing poverty in the world.

Then in 1915, from New York, I went back out to Seattle to create another orphanage.

What a fiasco that was.

I had selected this spot called the Perry Hotel and saw that it was owned by a Mr. Clark from New York.

So I wired my contacts in New York and told them to look for Mr. Clark and ask him to donate his hotel to us.

Well, Clark didn't want to donate his hotel, so I made him an offer and he didn't refuse it.

I offered him $100,000.

The problem was that I only had $10,000.

So I tried to get a $90,000 bank loan.

But the Seattle banks boycotted me because they didn't want me turning the Perry Hotel into an orphanage.

But one banker did come to our aid, and we were finally able to get a loan to buy the Perry Hotel.

But then I switched my thinking and I decided to make a hospital out of it instead.

But the other hospitals in the area didn't want competition, so they decided to boycott any doctor who wanted to work in our hospital.

And so I had to give up the hospital idea for now.

So I temporarily let the Perry Hotel become a tuberculosis sanatorium.

Then in Denver, I was having a similar problem with rivals.

The clergy didn't want their diocese to keep putting money into my orphanage.

So they demanded the orphanage be shut.

And to close it, they came up with an excuse that the building was poorly fireproofed.

So we re-fireproofed the place.

But the clergy were still out to shut me down.

So this time I called in the Cardinal and the threats disappeared.

But, you know, I didn't want to play the Cardinal card too many times.

Otherwise, it looks like I can't handle my own problems.

Then in 1916, it was back to L.A., But after about six months, I wasn't looking too well.

I was losing a lot of weight.

So I went back to Chicago to see the doctors.

In the meantime, while I visited with them and with the energy I had left, I bought a farm on the outskirts of Chicago.

Here's why.

Since the U.S. had entered World War I, I figured this would bring rationing, and I thought a farm would provide my missions and hospitals with food.

I even personally picked out the livestock, but I was getting weaker.

So I checked into Columbus Hospital.

They said I had endocarditis.

That is, bacteria were growing on the lining of my heart.

Well, whatever it was it really took the wind out of my sails.

But I also think that much of my weakness was from a deep worry over the senseless loss of human life from the war.

And then on December 22nd, 1917, I took my next journey.

This time it was to God.

So let's look at the numbers.

In my lifetime I established 67 houses, recruited 1000 Sisters, opened 26 schools and nine orphanages and sanatoriums.

In the U.S.

I built three hospitals, and this all helped over 90,000 U.S. Italian immigrants and countless others.

And I did it all for God.

And for this I was declared a saint.

Now, a saint isn't a magician, and we aren't perfect.

At least I know I wasn't.

Saints are just humans.

Saints are just humans.

But we're pious, that is, we tried to do everything for God.

And so the Church singles us out as people that you should model your life after.

And since I was so pious, the Church venerated me.

And because I had two miracles attributed to me, I was officially canonized.

Do you know what it means to be canonized?

Well, the canon is a master list of over 10,000 saints that the Catholic Church recognizes.

And in 1946, I became the first American saint, which at the time didn't mean anything to me since I was dead.

The list is really for you.

Now, just an F.Y.I.

about this list: some of the names on this list were never officially canonized by the Church.

Remember we talked about Saint Patrick's Cathedral?

Well, Saint Patrick died around 461, and official canonization in the Church didn't start until about the 1100s.

So before then, many people like Saint Patrick, Saint Stephen, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Joseph, they weren't officially canonized but were declared saints by popular acclaim, usually with the approval of a bishop.

And then some others on this list may not have even existed.

For instance, Saint Valentine and Saint Christopher might not have been real people.

They might have just been a legend.

But since many believed in them anyway, the Church recognized them as saints.

Now, here's a really odd example of a saint that was never officially canonized.

Did you ever hear of Saint Guinefort?

This saint had saved his master's baby.

And after Guinefort's death, the public considered Guinefort a saint that you can pray to, for the protection of infants.

The only thing is that Saint Guinefort is the dog.

[DOG BARK] So isn't that all interesting?

Anyway, you should read up on the stories on the lives of some of these saints.

It's definitely eye opening, entertaining and very inspiring.

But I warn you, many stories written about saints are not critical writings.

For instance, some authors like to make the saints look like perfect people.

These stories are called hagiographies.

Sometimes a hagiography might make claims that a saint came from poverty when the saint really grew up in wealth.

So why would uncritical books like this be written?

Well, maybe the authors hope that these sensational stories will sell more books.

But the bottom line is that uncritical histories of the saints are harmful because they hide very important lessons from us.

For instance, look at Saint Francis.

Saint Anthony, Saint Louise de Marillac and Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.

These saints and many more came from great wealth.

You know, if a Saint was from a wealthy background, not only should we not hide it, but we should rejoice because it shows that people from wealth are able to pass through the eye of the needle.

Do you know what that means?

Did you ever read Matthew 19:21 where Jesus tells a wealthy young man that if he wants to attain heaven that he'd have to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor?

Well, Jesus also tells the man that if he doesn't give away his possessions, then for him to get to heaven, it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

Well, I was from wealth and I was able to pass through the eye of the needle.

But are you able to do this?

If you're not sure then take this simple test: Are your actions ever motivated by money?

Are you ignoring the needs of your brothers and sisters?

Do you do anything in your life for some other purpose than for the glory of God?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, The bad news is that you're going to have a hard time passing through the eye of the needle.

But the good news is that with practice you can get there.

And if you need some help, just think of me or any of the saints.

Read up on what we did and model your life after ours.

I mean, look, the bottom line is you don't have to join a religious Order, but you have to live as Jesus would.

And you have to do everything for God.

Now, before I leave you, remember: pray to me.

Talk to me.

Tell me what you need, just like the Italian immigrants did.

Because where I am now, I can help you too.

Funding for the the American Women Saints Series on Elizabeth Ann Seton and Frances Xavier Cabrini was provided by: the Catholic Communication Campaign the Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton Foundation Additional funding was provided by the following: For more information, or to order a copy of this program visit www.BongiornoProductions.com