December 22: saint of the day, name day


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The Saint of the day 22 December is Santa Francesca Saverio Cabrini, which name day is celebrated and other saints are celebrated on this date.


Saint Francesca Saverio Cabrini

Born and baptized on 15 July 1850 in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, in a very believing and charitable family, Francesca Saverio Cabrini, who was the last of thirteen children, soon embarked on a journey of Christian faith.

The entry into the "House of Providence" in Codogno represented a decisive turning point in his life, the tribulations and the difficulties he had to face only consolidated his missionary ardor and the desire to give himself completely to God.


In that place she received the religious dress and, subsequently, graduated primary school teacher in 1874, to her name Francesca wanted to add that of Saverio, to remember the great Jesuit missionary patron of the missions.

Supported and encouraged by the Bishop of Lodi, Monsignor Domenico Maria Gelmini, Sister Francesca Saverio detached, together with seven Sisters, from the House of Providence to go and found, at an ancient Franciscan convent in the city, the Institute of the Salesian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, which obtained official approval of the diocese in 1881.

Mother Cabrini asked her religious to obey the Gospel, directing their lives towards mortification, renunciation, vigilance of the heart and inner silence.


The institute was affected by the birth of numerous vocations, which led to a rapid expansion of the Institute in Lombardy and even beyond the borders of that region, with the opening of other religious places of that type in Rome.

After eight years, on 12 March 1888, the pontifical approval of the "Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus" came as a religious order.

This women's congregation was the first to face missionary commitment, which had traditionally until then been a prerogative reserved only for men.


With a group of sisters, Mother Cabrini left for New York, in the first of the many trips that would later see her reach, messenger of hope, ever new destinations in her tireless apostolate, including Nicaragua, Brazil, the Argentina, in addition to France, Spain and England.

With much courage, Francesca Saverio Cabrini had schools, hospitals and orphanages built from nothing dedicated to masses of the dispossessed who came to the West to seek work and lacked knowledge of the language, as well as suitable means to allow them a decent insertion in society and often victims of unscrupulous people.

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  • December 22: saint of the day, name day

He had a motherly heart that never gave himself peace, he reached wherever he needed, from prisons to hovels.

Fatigue and distances did not intimidate her, Mother Cabrini traveled from New York to New Jersey, from Pennsylvania to Illinois, from California to Louisiana and Colorado, she also made twenty-eight Atlantic crossings and the crossing of the Andes to reach Buenos Aires with departure from Panama.

Francesca Saverio Cabrini died on December 22, 1917 while traveling to Chicago, her body was transported triumphantly to New York, to the church annexed to the school she herself had founded, so that she was close to the emigrants.

In the United States, devotion to this Saint is still alive today, who, while loving her homeland of origin, wished to assume American citizenship in 1909.

She was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1938, when just 21 years had passed since her death, and was canonized on July 7, 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

It was Pius XII who, in the Holy Year of 1950, proclaimed her "Patroness of emigrants", to defend the dignity of those who were forced to live far from their homeland.

Other saints and celebrations on December 22nd

  • Saints Cheremone of Nilopoli and companions
  • Martyrs


  • St. Ischirione of Alessandria
  • Martyr

  • Holy Martyrs of Rhaitu
  • Holy Martyrs of Via Labicana
  • Blessed Thomas Holland
  • Jesuit priest, martyr

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