The popular film “Cabrini” was released in 2024 by Angel Studios, but you can read “the rest of the story” about the profound connection between Mother St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and the most famous bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Alexandria.
Father Chad Partain, the pastor of Cabrini Church in Alexandria, and a noted historian, tells the story that Mother Cabrini founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880, and she sent the sisters to New Orleans to minister to a large Italian community that had immigrated to New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century.
The sisters established a school and orphanage in the French Quarter, and one of the youngsters at the school was Charles Greco.
“Word came that Mother Cabrini was going to visit the sisters and inspect the school and the orphanage,” said Father Chad, as he is affectionately called. “She attended a school Mass, and the altar boy was Greco. When the Mass was over, Mother and some of the sisters came in the sacristy and thanked the priest for offering Mass. The priest introduced the altar server to Cabrini.”
Mother Cabrini asked Greco what he wanted to be when he grew up, and young Charles said, “Mother, I want to become a priest.”
“She placed her hand on the boy’s head and didn’t speak for a few moments, gazing in the distance above his head,” Partain said. “Then she said to the sisters in Italian, ‘This boy will become a priest, and he will go far in the priesthood.’ The sisters never told him what she said, and he did go on and become a priest in 1918.
“Years later,” Father continued, “when Greco was named the 6th bishop of Alexandria in 1946, some of the sisters who were there in the sacristy that day told him what Mother Cabrini had said. One of his first trips abroad as bishop was to attend the canonization of Mother Cabrini to sainthood (in July of ’46).”
When Greco returned to Alexandria, plans were already in the works from his predecessor, Bishop Daniel Desmond, for a new parish to be built in Alexandria.
“He said, ‘We won’t build one, we’ll build two,’” Father said, “and one he dedicated under the patronage of St. Frances Cabrini.” (The other was Our Lady of Prompt Succor Church.) Cabrini Parish was to have a church and school.
Bishop Daniel Desmond, meanwhile, had done the groundwork for a new hospital and bought the land from the Prescott family, Partain said, and the hospital was to be named St. Mary’s. Bishop Greco was instrumental in getting the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, who were administering and staffing the school, to serve the new hospital. But when it was built, Greco dedicated it as St. Frances Cabrini Hospital.
Greco, who served as Bishop of Alexandria from 1946 to 1973, never forgot that encounter he’d had with a saint, however brief it might have been at the time, Partain said. Thus came the overflowing evidence in Alexandria of places named for the Mother Superior of her order. And like the feisty Cabrini, Greco would not be stopped in any pursuit of a goal for the diocese.
And now, Father Chad says he has had a lifelong devotion to Mother Cabrini, who, he says, had an ardent spiritual life that wasn’t clearly demonstrated in the movie.
“Being baptized in this parish and attending this (elementary) school, my first writing assignment was a short biography of Mother Cabrini for the school newspaper,” Partain said, noting even as a boy he loved the portrait of Mother Cabrini that still hangs in a school hallway. Cabrini Church also has a relic of the saint that Bishop Greco brought back to Alexandria from her canonization ceremony. There is also a near life-size statue of her in the small chapel behind the main Cabrini Church altar. There’s a whole other story as to how that statue made its way to the church from its original digs at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Natchitoches.
“Getting older and being able to read more about her life,” Father Chad continued, “I am amazed at her courage, perseverance and fortitude” despite her small size, sickly nature and disrespect she often received as an Italian immigrant. “She is a real role model of courage and generosity in the service of souls.”
(Editor’s note: This is a column that Bob Tompkins wrote in 2024, slightly updated in observance of Easter week.)