The Remarkable Legacies of Ordinary Catholic Women, by Bronwen McShea

By Bronwen McShea, First Things, April 1, 2024

Excerpted and adapted from Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know by Bronwen McShea. Published by Ignatius Press and the Augustine Institute. © Ignatius Press / The Augustine Institute. Used with permission. 

The following is excerpted and adapted from Bronwen McShea’s new book, Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, out today from Ignatius Press and the Augustine Institute.

In recent weeks, audiences all over the United States have been introduced by Angels Studios, through the film Cabrini, to the remarkable figure of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who built up charitable orphanages, schools, and hospitals for marginalized Italian immigrants in New York City. During the lifetime of their foundress, who died in the middle of World War I in 1917 and who was canonized less than thirty years later, the Missionary Sisters tended also to other neglected, impoverished populations across the United States and in several Latin American and European countries, building, as the makers of Cabrini call it, “an empire of hope” for the poor in an era famous for the robber barons and widespread exploitation of the lower classes.

Most baptized Catholics today know little about the fuller historical legacies of saints such as Mother Cabrini. They tend to be taught even less about the broader, rich, and complicated history of the Catholic Church that is also part of their patrimony. …

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