December 22nd. St. Frances Cabrini.

This saint, distinguished for her work for orphans in the United States, was born in the Northern Italian town of Pavia in 1870. Her wish to live the religious life was initially frustrated by poor health but her work in an orphanage in the diocese attracted the attention of a wider circle. Her foundation of the missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart was approved in the 1880's and in 1889 she arrived in New York with a number of sisters, at the invitation of the archbishop, to work among Italian immigrants, who were suffering from acute spiritual neglect. The lack of infrastructure was so crippling that at first she was advised to return to Italy, but she persevered and various foundations, orphanages and schools followed, including some in Latin America, catering for many besides the Italians among whom she had originally come to work. She died of malaria in Chicago in 1917 and was canonised in 1946.