Mother Cabrini Shrine – Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

In keeping with the spirit of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, staff and volunteers of Mother Cabrini Shrine provide a unique and peaceful environment for visitors to experience God’s loving presence through quiet meditation and prayer.

The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart

See also the The National Shrine of St Frances Xavier Cabrini.

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The Grotto  at the Mother Cabrini Shrine

A replica of the grotto of Lourdes, France, was built over this spring in 1929 and was demolished and replaced in 1959 by the present one, built of sandstone.

Here, in the quiet atmosphere of candlelight before the Mother Cabrini altar, many come to pray and ask her intercession with the Sacred Heart and His Holy Mother.

Mother Cabrini Shrine

Mother Cabrini loved the mountains of Colorado. The foothills west of Denver held a special attraction for her.

During her journeys in 1902 to visit the Italian workers and their families in the Clear Creek, Argentine, and South Park mining districts, Frances X. Cabrini discovered a property on the east slope of Lookout Mountain owned by the town of Golden.

No reliable source of water was known to exist on the property at that time, although there were two fine barns and a springhouse built in the 1890s. In 1909 -1910, she negotiated the purchase of this property as a summer camp for her charges at the Queen of Heaven Orphanage in Denver, CO.

A farming operation, with poultry, other livestock and dairy cows, was established and maintained by three of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart who set up living quarters in the loft of the larger barn.

During the summer months, groups of about twenty girls, according to age, would spend several weeks at the summer camp. They enjoyed the freedom of the outdoors and recreational activities in addition to tending the animals and performing farm chores.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

The youngest of thirteen children, Frances Cabrini was born on July 15, 1850 in a small village called S’ant Angelo Lodigiano near the city of Milan, Italy.

She grew up enthralled by the stories of missionaries and made up her mind to join a religious order. Because of her frail health, she was not permitted to join the Daughters of the Sacred Heart who had been her teachers and under whose guidance she obtained her teaching certificate.

However, in 1880, with seven young women, Frances founded the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

She was as resourceful as she was prayerful, finding people who would donate what she needed in money, time, labor and support. She and her sisters wanted to be missionaries in China; she visited Rome to obtain an audience with Pope Leo XIII.

The Pope told Frances to go “not to the East, but to the West” to New York rather than to China as she had expected. She was to help the thousands of Italian immigrants already in the United States.

In 1889, New York seemed to be filled with chaos and poverty, and into this new world stepped Mother Frances Cabrini and her sister companions.

Cabrini organized catechism and education classes for the Italian immigrants and provided for the needs of the many orphans. She established schools and orphanages despite tremendous odds.

Soon, requests for her to open schools came to Frances Cabrini from all over the world. She traveled to Europe, Central and South America and throughout the United States. She made 23 trans-Atlantic crossings and established 67 institutions: schools, hospitals and orphanages.