Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC), a religious institute that today provides education, health care, and other services to the poor in 15 nations.

Despite anti-Italian prejudice and opposition within the Catholic Church, she successfully established charitable institutions in New York City for poor Italian immigrants.

[3] Born two months prematurely, Frances Cabrini was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health throughout her life.

[9] In 1872, while working with the sick during a smallpox outbreak, she contracted the disease and was rejected by the Canossian Sisters of Crema, again due to health reasons.

With several of the former Providence sisters, Cabrini in November 1880 founded the Institute of the Salesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC).

[11][12] At the Codogno convent, the MSC sisters took in orphans and foundlings, opened a day school, started classes in needlework, and sold their fine embroidery.

Countess Mary Reid DiCesnola, a wealthy Catholic socialite in Manhattan, had been relentlessly petitioning both the pope and Archbishop Michael Corrigan of New York to open an orphanage there for Italian girls, which she would fund.

[7] During the 1880s, the pope and the rest of the Roman Curia were worried about the large numbers of impoverished Italian immigrants emigrating to New York.

Scalabrini promised Cabrini that his religious order, Scalabrinians would greet the MSC sisters in New York City, take care of their needs, and work closely with them.

[7] Corrigan wrote to Cabrini in February 1889, welcoming her to New York City, but advising her to delay her departure to allow more time for preparation.

The sisters spent their first night in the United States in a decrepit rooming house with bed bugs in the mattresses, forcing them to sleep on chairs.

[6][11][3] During this period, the Catholic hierarchy and clergy in New York City were dominated by Irish immigrants who share a common prejudice against Italians.

[15][13] After the meeting with Corrigan, the Sisters of Charity in the Bronx gladly provided temporary residence for Cabrini and her entourage at their convent.

Cabrini wrote back to the sisters in Italy, asking that they send over fabrics for the making of additional veils and habits.

At that time, many Italian immigrants in New York were suspicious of the institutional Catholic Church, sentiments fostered by the government of the newly unified Italy.

In addition, as most of the immigrants came from Sicily, Calabria and other southern regions, they were initially suspicious of the MSC sisters, who all originated from Lombardy in Northern Italy.

[15][13] With Corrigan's blessing and funding from DiCesnola, Cabrini opened the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

However, the high cost of running the orphanage in the city, plus increasing friction with Corrigan, soon prompted Cabrini to move it to the countryside.

Cabrini once wrote:“What we as women cannot do on a large scale to help solve grave social ills is being done in our small sphere of influence in every state and city where we have opened houses.

In them we shelter and care for orphans, the sick and the poor.”Although she moved the MSC order to West Park, Cabrini continued to work in New York City.

The area was a hotbed of anti-Catholic sentiment, combined with racial discrimination against immigrants from Southern Italy, who locals believed did not "look White" In 1891, a large mob forcibly removed 11 Italian men in jail and killed them.

[13][7] During the early 1890s, Cabrini established schools for Italian communities in Manhattan, the Bronx, Newark, New Jersey, and Scranton, Pennsylvania.

[17] In 1907, Cabrini stopped in Philadelphia to have dinner with Mother Katherine Drexel, who had established numerous Catholic missions and schools through the United States for African-Americans and Native Americans.

In a very amiable conversation, Drexel told Cabrini that the Vatican bureaucracy was stymieing her religious order on a legal matter.

She applied for citizenship to assure the legal foundation of the MSC order after her death and to demonstrate solidarity with the Americans that she served.

However, after hearing about problems with the Columbus Extension Hospital in Chicago, Cabrini switched their bookings to an earlier voyage on a different ship.

[5][19] Cabrini's body lay in state at Columbus Hospital until December 26, when it was transported from Chicago to New York City by train.

During her lifetime, Cabrini founded 67 orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean region, and in Europe.

[31] In 1950, Pius XII named Cabrini as the patron saint of immigrants, recognizing her efforts worldwide to build schools, orphanages and hospitals.

They moved the Cabrini remains from the MSC property in West Park, New York, in 1938 to a glass-enclosed coffin under the altar of the high school chapel.