SANT’ANGELO LODIGIANO, Italy — Pope Leo XIV on Saturday exalted the first American saint, Mom Frances Cabrini, as a model for Christians at present to care for migrants in want, as he visited her birthplace throughout a day journey to northern Italy.
Leo, who has clashed with the Trump administration over its migrant crackdown, urged younger individuals specifically to find out about Cabrini’s life and repair, as soon as once more confirming historical past’s first U.S. pope as the inheritor to Pope Francis in prioritizing the plight of migrants.
Leo prayed earlier than Cabrini’s tomb in a basilica named for her in her birthplace in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, close to Milan, and presided over a night prayer service. The go to to northern Italy is an element of Leo’s summertime grand tour of Italy to go to key cities to get to know his flock.
Cabrini, the patron saint of migrants, is well-known to many Individuals for her work caring for Italian immigrants in america on the flip of the final century. Her work went past the U.S., nonetheless, as she crisscrossed the globe constructing faculties, hospitals and orphanages for those that had nothing.
After she died in 1917, as a naturalized U.S. citizen in Leo’s native Chicago, Cabrini was beatified after which canonized in 1946 as the first American saint.
Leo asks what Francis would do
In praising Cabrini on Saturday, Leo stated she was impressed by her religion to assist these migrants who had left the whole lot behind to attempt to discover a higher life.
“What might be extra related at present than a missionary charism devoted to serving migrants?” he stated.
“Allow us to ask ourselves: if Mom Francesca have been alive at present, what would her missionary spirit inform her?” Leo stated. “And what would a pope like Francis – who, as the son of Italian immigrants, made service to migrants one of the important thing priorities of his hold forth – ask of her?”
“I due to this fact take this chance to make an enchantment, particularly to younger individuals: get to know St. Frances Cabrini!” Leo stated, urging them to learn her writings, journey journals and notes from retreats.
A July 4 with migrants
Leo has embraced the Catholic Church’s Gospel-mandated name to “welcome the stranger” in his ministry to migrants. Final week, Leo spent two days in Spain’s Canary Islands, a main vacation spot for migrants leaving West Africa, the place he known as for welcoming and integrating these fleeing hardship and battle.
Leo’s subsequent Italy day journey is on July 4, when he heads to Lampedusa, the Sicilian island that’s a main vacation spot for migrants fleeing North Africa for Italy.
Leo’s conflict with the Trump administration over migration has given added symbolic significance to his choice to spend July 4 – U.S. Independence Day – in Lampedusa, which was the place Francis selected to make his first journey exterior Rome as pope, in 2013.
A prayer on the tomb of St. Augustine
Leo arrived in Cabrini’s hometown after first stopping in close by Pavia to wish on the tomb of St. Augustine, the fifth-century inspiration of his non secular order. There, he inspired Italians to rediscover their lagging Catholic religion.
Like many once-Christian strongholds in Europe, Italy has seen its church buildings empty in recent times amid secularizing developments, with fewer and fewer Italians getting married within the church or going to Mass repeatedly.
“At a time when many individuals appear to have misplaced their religious urge for food or, for numerous causes, now not discover the Christian religion interesting for their lives, we’re known as first and foremost to proclaim the Gospel,” Leo stated.
He pointed to Augustine as a supply of inspiration for at present’s trustworthy.
Augustine was born in 354 in what’s at present Algeria, however he lived for 5 years in and round Milan, the place he transformed to Christianity. He later turned a bishop, developed a rule for monastic life and wrote some of an important works of Western thought, together with “Confessions” and “The Metropolis of God.”
“His thought, the story of his conversion, and his spirituality remind us of the worth and primacy of interiority,” of discovering that means inside oneself, Leo stated.
Leo proclaimed himself a “son of St. Augustine” on the night time of his election and has cited Augustine prolifically in his first 12 months, making clear that the saint is the guiding inspiration of his hold forth.
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