'Cabrini' Review: Well Done but a Little Too Mainstream

Thursday night, my parents and I went to see the new movie Cabrini, which was showing at a theater near us the day before its worldwide release on Friday. Mother Cabrini has always been special to me because I went to the high school that she founded in New Orleans, Cabrini High School. The movie was well done and portrayed Mother Cabrini fairly well, showing how she pushed forward amid so much opposition and discrimination from those who only saw that she was both Italian, not American, and a woman. Her tenacity and boldness were instrumental in the establishment of her institutions in the US and around the world and the movie did a great job of getting this point across and showing how she used it to her advantage. However, I did feel that there was not enough emphasis on the Faith and how Jesus sustained her during this time. Apart from showing her talking to her sisters about doing “all things in Him that strengthens us” and praying before a meal, there was rarely talk of God or Jesus and there were no scenes in which Mother Cabrini was praying privately in the midst of her struggles (there was a scene of her in a chapel but no prayers were said). There were also things that she said that didn’t seem to fit her or what we would think someone who would one day become a saint would say.

Toward the beginning of the movie, when Mother Cabrini and her sisters first arrived in America, she said something to them about “trusting in ourselves and our mission.” I don’t think Mother Cabrini would have said that. She was greatly devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and she would have said “let us put our trust in the Lord,” not ourselves. Later on, one of the girls in her orphanage asked her about dying and whether or not she was afraid. She replied that of course she was afraid and that was why she worked so much, because when she rested she felt that dying became real and working made her feel like she could put off death for a while. There was no mention of a hope in the resurrection and not being afraid because death meant meeting her Spouse and being with Him for all eternity. Surely, the real Mother Cabrini would have had the latter sentiment and would not have missed the opportunity to pass this on to someone under her care.

Wanting to reach a wide audience with a movie like this is a great goal and can teach many people about someone who may not have been well known otherwise. It has to be more than that, though. We have to want to bring people in to the fold of the Catholic faith through a movie like this and leaving out key dialogue and religious language is not going to do that. We are seeing how wanting to appeal to the mainstream is affecting the Church today, and the same will happen in society if we try to draw people into the Church without really teaching them about the Church. I do recommend this movie and will say that it marvelously portrays how Mother Cabrini built “her holy empire” as she says, but I do caution that it is not the whole story and want the viewer to realize that she did not do it on her own, but with the help of God and that she trusted in Him the whole way through, even if the movie fails to really get that point across.