Cabrini Film Falls Short on Faith

Mother Cabrini is anything but frail. Despite suffering from a long-term debilitating lung condition as a result of nearly drowning as a young girl, the Italian-American saint exhibits a tenacious resolve, tending to downtrodden immigrants in New York City, while clashing against the powerful in the Catholic Church and City Hall.

In short, the new film Cabrini produced by Angel Studios and directed by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde — the same team behind last year’s surprisingly successful yet controversial Sound of Freedom — offers movie audiences a “girl boss” worthy of imitation unlike in major blockbuster franchises such as Marvel, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

The filmmakers recognized Mother Cabrini as a historical woman who displayed tremendous heroic virtue. To be sure, she became the first U.S. citizen canonized by the Catholic Church on July 7, 1946, for doing just that: humbly serving the poor and exhibiting the depths of God’s heart for humanity.

However, Cabrini’s saint played by Cristiana Dell’Anna — while honorable for her charity — lacks an examination of what rooted her virtuous life beyond an ambition to “conquer the world with hope,” as she describes. Ultimately, what or who is foundational to that hope is unresolved in a film that instead highlights worldly motivators to appeal to secular audiences.

One motivator is revealed while she is digging for well at Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum, a property abandoned by the Jesuits due a lack of drinking water (apart from a nearby river). Mother Cabrini suffers from insomnia; yet she is determined to succeed where others have failed. One night she shares to Vittoria (Romana Maggiora Vergano) — a prostitute whom she took in and cared for — that she fears resting because that’s when “death creeps in.” Diagnosed with only a few years to live, her plight is understandable. But fear of rest, while maybe realistic, was not the prime mover in her life. Some saints persevered through “dark nights of the soul,” as described by St. John of the Cross, but rest is necessary in the Christian life to hear God’s voice in the silence of our hearts. One of her religious sisters utters that “We will have time to rest in heaven,” but certainly it’s troubling when the film fails to depict the saint in prayer, which she hardly does. To not have prayer significantly depicted removes a core element of the real Mother Cabrini.

Secondly, Cabrini explores her pursuit of proving to powerful men that women are capable of leadership. Yet this element is more reminiscent of Back to the Future’s Marty McFly when he is called “chicken” by bullies. Even Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo Giannini), who sends her order to America, cannot tell where Mother Cabrini’s faith ends and ambition begins. This motivation meets an unsatisfactory, even troubling, conclusion when Mother Cabrini finally faces the fictional anatagonist, Mayor Gould (John Lithgow), who represents the anti-Italian discrimination immigrants endured at the turn of the 20th century. Instead of revealing to the press about his administration’s part in setting fire to her hospital, Mother Cabrini — in a scene ripped out of Ghostbusters — offers her people’s support in an upcoming election if she is allowed to minister to their basic needs. Her heroic virtue is reduced to a seemingly contrived climax. Nevertheless, Mayor Gould is impressed by her political tact, finally accepting that perhaps Italians are not as backwatered or unintelligent as he presumed. He even tells her over a glass of Scotch, “You would’ve made a fine man.” Mother Cabrini responds that men cannot do what women can. 

The film’s answer, however, should be Jesus Christ yet His name is mysteriously never uttered throughout the film. He is relegated to a tattered framed painting and a crucifix in hazy backgrounds. Of course, in film language, the latter symbolizes she is motivated by a love of God; but this is not enough for a woman who once said, “I will go anywhere and do anything in order to communicate the love of Jesus to those who do not know Him or have forgotten Him.” Even “God” is seldom mentioned apart from a plea to the Italian Senate to fund her New York City hospital or to City officials disinterested in immigrants’ living conditions in the notorious Five Points. 

Surely, actions do speak louder than words, and Cabrini’s protagonist acts justly. In one heartfelt moment, Mother Cabrini is offered two choices of fabric for the children’s clothes. Without hesitation, she chooses the more expensive saying, “They will know,” emphasizing the dignity she sees in every human person — and how acts of self-sacrifice can transform other hearts. Ultimately, Mother Cabrini is proven right: the children and those who encounter her feel important, and reduced to outcasts living on society’s peripheries. The saint’s love for her fellow man is also depicted after she tends to victims of an industrial accident. In a moment of weakness, she weeps for the dead, knowing full well that if they were admitted to a more equipped hospital, fewer lives would have been lost.

Cabrini exorbitantly shows the saint’s charism and the corporal works of mercy. Faith is certainly not absent from the film, but it fails to prominently take center stage as one would hope on a deeper level. 

It makes one question the film’s intended audience. Granted, Christian and/or faith-based movies tend to garner ridicule by secular audiences for poor production value and lacking subtlety. Cabrini, in those respects, is an outlier, far-and-away exceeding others in the genre with some truly beautiful cinematography. Nevertheless, faith-based movies also reap successful box office grosses when compared to their budgets. Essentially, Cabrini’s filmmakers did not have to fear producing a box-office dud — there is an audience craving for religious content. So why is Cabrini coy about her deep, inner relationship with God? It’s a commendable aspiration to want to lure religious ‘nones’ into the theater to examine a heroically virtuous person’s biography. But the film leaves an incomplete depiction of the saint’s heart, which may not convince secular viewers why they should learn more about the faith that inspired her to act.

To the movie’s credit, in the final moments, the filmmakers show how Mother Cabrini’s order did, in fact, spread across the world from East to West as she had envisioned. So one will admire her tireless work. Yet in the dramatic depiction, the final shot is of Mother Cabrini gazing at her adopted homeland from the mayor’s office, symbolizing her victory of “conquering” America. But it does not feel like she did so with “hope,” that hope being Jesus Christ. 

In the end, Mother Cabrini is certainly more endearing and admirable than other “girl boss” heroines Hollywood has injected into pop culture. But without the hope and heroic virtue underpinning her entire life’s work and legacy, Cabrini falls short of convincing secular audiences what singularly differentiates her: She is not a “girl boss,” but much more — she is a saint.