Mother Cabrini garners most votes as person to be depicted in planned statue for Chicago park

CHICAGO (OSV News) — A statue of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint, will be put in a public park on Chicago’s Near West Side. It will replace a Christopher Columbus statue that was removed during the pandemic.

The Chicago Park District announced Feb. 18 that Mother Cabrini received 1,500 of a total 3,900 votes submitted by the public. She was one of eight eligible nominees who were Italians or Americans of Italian descent, who were chosen from dozens of proposed candidates and met specific criteria.

The memorial statue of the patron saint of immigrants will be erected at Arrigo Park in Chicago’s Little Italy, a historically Italian American neighborhood.

Mother Cabrini arrived in the U.S. in 1889, via Ellis Island, providing the poorest of the poor Italian immigrants of New York with food, shelter, education and health services. By the 1890s, she established services in Chicago, also erecting several hospitals. She expanded those services to all immigrants across the country and around the world.

By the time of her death in 1917, at age 67, the naturalized American citizen had established 67 education, health and social service institutions throughout the world.

“(Mother Cabrini) didn’t just serve immigrant families, she built institutions that transformed lives,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in the park district’s press release. “She founded schools, orphanages, and hospitals that cared for Italian immigrants facing hardship, and she ensured that resources flowed back into the neighborhoods that needed them most.”

Mother Cabrini, originally from a small town outside Milan, Italy, founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880. The order has a few hundred sisters serving in 15 countries, according to the sisters. They serve refugees and work in social work, health care and education among other services.

The park district said the city looked for specific criteria in its search for a candidate to be memorialized, including: demonstrated “civic contribution, historical and cultural significance, and integrity and enduring impact.” They were required to be of Italian descent and to have been deceased for more than a decade.

The office said it received 157 proposed candidates. The eight who met all criteria included Mother Cabrini; Renato Dulbecco, a pioneer in molecular biology, virology and cancer research; Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist; Philip Mazzei, a philosopher whose writing was incorporated by Thomas Jefferson into the Declaration of Independence; Maria Montessori, known for her innovative education method; Florence Scala, a community organizer who fought to keep the Little Italy neighborhood intact during a time of rapid expansion; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; and explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who named the Americas.

A Sacred Heart missionary sister confirmed to OSV News this will be the first Mother Cabrini statue to be erected in a public place in the city. Her only other statue in Chicago is on the grounds of Holy Name Cathedral downtown.

In 2020, a Christopher Columbus statue downtown was removed after protesters tried to topple it in a fight with police. The city also removed the one in Arrigo Park and another one on the South Side, after protesters said the explorer was an insult to Indigenous Americans.

The city’s deadline to submit design proposals for the Mother Cabrini statue is March 1.

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