“Cabrini” Secularizes a Saint, by Thomas V. Mirus

By Thomas V. Mirus, Catholic Culture, March 04, 2024

Thomas V. Mirus is Director of Podcasts for CatholicCulture.org, hosts The Catholic Culture Podcast, and co-hosts Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast.

After I saw Cabrini, the new biopic of the great missionary saint who served the immigrant poor in New York, I perused some other Catholic reviews of the film, and something struck me as odd. The reviewers seemed to admit, tacitly or explicitly, what I observed in my own viewing: the film contains little about God, prayer, or the Catholic faith in general. Yet, strangely, many of these reviewers don’t conclude that this is a fatal flaw in a movie about a Catholic saint.

To be honest, despite the film’s executive producer and director being Catholic, I wasn’t really expecting the Mormon company Angel Studios to distribute an unreservedly Catholic film—one that would feature St. Frances’s deep devotion to the Sacred Heart, for instance. But while it admirably portrays Cabrini spending herself in service to the poor and winning the hearts of young ruffians (in impressive sets conveying old New York), the film is barely even generically Christian in its focus, ….