By Simone Orendain
OSV News
CHICAGO — A statue of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint, will be put in a public park on Chicago’s Near West Side. It will replace a Christopher Columbus statue that was removed during the pandemic.
The Chicago Park District announced Feb. 18 that Mother Cabrini received 1,500 of 3,900 votes submitted by the public. She was one of eight finalists chosen from among dozens of nominees who were Italians or Americans of Italian descent and who met specific criteria, including being deceased for more than a decade.
The memorial statue of the patron saint of immigrants will be erected at Arrigo Park in Chicago’s Little Italy, a historically Italian American neighborhood.
Mother Cabrini arrived in the U.S. in 1889, via Ellis Island, providing the poorest of the poor Italian immigrants of New York with food, shelter, education and health services. By the 1890s, she established services in Chicago, also erecting several hospitals. She expanded those services to all immigrants across the country and around the world.
By the time of her death in 1917, at age 67, the naturalized American citizen had established 67 education, health and social service institutions throughout the world.
“(Mother Cabrini) didn’t just serve immigrant families, she built institutions that transformed lives,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in the park district’s press release. “She founded schools, orphanages, and hospitals that cared for Italian immigrants facing hardship, and she ensured that resources flowed back into the neighborhoods that needed them most.”
Mother Cabrini, originally from a small town outside Milan, Italy, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880. The order has a few hundred sisters serving in 15 countries, according to the sisters. They serve refugees and work in social work, health care and education among other services.
In 2020, a Christopher Columbus statue downtown was removed after protesters tried to topple it in a fight with police. The city also removed the one in Arrigo Park and another one on the South Side, after protesters said the explorer was an insult to Indigenous Americans.