Mother Cabrini models ‘missionary charism’ for migrants, says Leo on Italian visit

The Pope travelled to Lombardy to visit the Basilica of St Peter in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, which houses the relics of St Augustine of Hippo, and to the nearby birthplace of St Frances Xavier Cabrini.

Pope Leo paid tribute Saturday to St Frances Xavier Cabrini as a model for how the Church should respond to migrants today.

He was speaking on Saturday during a day-long visit to northern Italy, where he travelled to venerate the relics of St Augustine in the town of Pavia.

Before returning to the Vatican, the Pope travelled to Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, in the Diocese of Lodi, the birthplace of Cabrini.

The Italian-born missionary became a tireless defender of migrants in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. She died in Chicago in 1917 – the same city where Pope Leo was born. She was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1938 and canonised by Pope Pius XII in 1946, making her the first US citizen to be declared a saint.

Welcomed by about 5,000 locals, Pope Leo visited the parish of Santi Antonio Abate e Francesca Cabrini for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and to venerate Cabrini’s heart.

“When I learned that Sant’Angelo Lodigiano is only a few kilometres from Pavia,” Pope Leo said, “I thought I would take the opportunity, and here I am.”

He said Mother Cabrini, following the guidance of Pope Leo XIII and St John Baptist Scalabrini, “interpreted the signs of the times” and understood that her dream of going to China, in imitation of St Francis Xavier, had to be fulfilled where the need was greatest.

“Today that sign, that is, the phenomenon of migration, has entered a different phase, certainly more complex, yet no less capable of challenging the Church,” he said, asking what Cabrini’s missionary soul would say if she were alive today.

“For my part, I inherited and carried forward the magisterium of Pope Francis with the apostolic exhortation Dilexi te on love for the poor,” he said.

“And there, where it speaks of charity in the form of accompanying migrants, the figure of St Frances Cabrini appears right alongside St John Baptist Scalabrini. What could be more timely than a missionary charism placed at the service of migrants?”

The Pope also urged young people to learn more about Cabrini, saying that those who come to know her “are captivated by her”.

“Her soul was at once contemplative and active,” he said. “She was immersed in the love of the heart of Christ, and this gave her an extraordinary capacity for work and strength of spirit.”

In his greeting to the Pope, Bishop Maurizio Malvestiti of Lodi praised Cabrini’s “original and highly fruitful” union of contemplation and social charity.

Both dimensions, he said, were “overwhelming and far-sighted in an evangelical reading of the times and of new realities”, marked by “ecumenical and interreligious intuitions” that testify that “no one is a stranger in history: we are all called to fraternity in justice and peace”.

Earlier in the day Pope Leo had visited the Basilica of St Peter in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, which houses the relics of St Augustine of Hippo.

The basilica, whose construction began in the eighth century, has housed the remains of St Augustine since around the year 722, when they arrived in Pavia from Cagliari.

The relics had previously been brought to Sardinia in 504 from Augustine’s see of Hippo, now Annaba, which Pope Leo visited during his apostolic journey to Algeria in April.

Pope Leo’s fellow Augustinians Fr Joseph L. Farrell, prior general of the Order of St Augustine, Fr Gabriele Pedicino, provincial prior, and Fr Gianfranco Casagrande, prior of the convent, welcomed him to the basilica, where he met the Augustinian community and, later in the cloister, the bishops of the Lombardy Episcopal Conference.

The last papal visit to the Basilica of St Peter in Ciel d’Oro took place in 2007, when Pope Benedict XVI came to Pavia and was welcomed by Fr Robert Francis Prevost, then prior general of the Order of St Augustine.

Greeting those present in the cloister, where about 1,800 were gathered inside and outside the basilica, Pope Leo spoke briefly.

“I know many of you,” he said. “St Augustine teaches us to live and to love God and our brothers and sisters. Fraternal love and charity toward all are important. This is the message of Jesus and of St Augustine. We are signs of love and charity, and we know how to live forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.”

In his greeting to the Augustinian community, Leo said that “St Augustine is not ours – he belongs to the Church, and our mission is to make him known in the Church”, because Augustine “has so much to offer in this time”.

He said it is necessary “to offer the message of love for Christ and love for the Church”, adding: “May St Augustine always help us to live this mission.”

In his address in the basilica, Pope Leo praised the Church in Pavia as “a community of ancient tradition that remains alive and present in the city and territory, attentive to the signs of this time and to its challenges, without allowing itself to be discouraged by fatigue, by the secularised context, and by the difficulties in transmitting the faith”.

To avoid discouragement, he said, Christians need “a gaze animated by the spirit of faith” that helps them read reality more deeply and resist “a negative and pessimistic attitude, incapable of generating new life”.

“The gaze that is required of us is instead that of Jesus,” he said.

The Pope asked what it means to be “a living Church”, answering that it requires remaining united to Christ, “the living stone, rejected by men but chosen by God”.

“Christ is the foundation of the spiritual building,” Leo said. “He is the cornerstone placed as the basis of our ecclesial journey, of pastoral action and of evangelisation.”

Being built in Christ, he said, protects the Church from the risk of becoming scattered or exhausted by “secondary things” that may be good but do not reach what is essential.

“Since the centre is Christ, we all draw from this one source and submit our efforts to the discernment that comes from his light and his word,” he continued. “Then we help grow a Church in which people walk together, capable of renewing itself without division, in which all recognise one another as brothers and sisters and work joyfully in service of the kingdom of God.”

Leo urged Christian communities to be centred on what is essential, “even if this should involve giving up some structures and some securities of the past”.

“The essential thing is to live with Christ, and spreading his Gospel is what must be close to our hearts,” he said.

The Pope addressed his appeal first to priests, calling them to “always return to the centre” and to unify everything in their relationship with the Lord.

He also encouraged men and women religious, who he said often know the fatigue of updating the charism to which they belong, to begin again from Christ and share their gifts with the whole diocesan Church.

In a secularised world, Leo said, Christians are called above all to bring “the joyful and liberating proclamation of Jesus Christ” and to help people discover or rediscover the faith.

The Pope pointed again to Augustine, saying that “his thought, the story of his conversion and his spirituality remind us of the value and primacy of interiority”.

“As living stones, we are called to be a Church well rooted in the territory,” Leo said, “a Church that walks amid the struggles and hopes of the people, expert in the art of listening and accompanying.”

He emphasised the importance in Pavia of university pastoral ministry and dialogue with culture, saying that study and scientific work challenge believers to offer a faith capable of illuminating the human search for truth, justice, and beauty.

Before the pope’s address, Bishop Corrado Sanguineti of Pavia described the local Church as “a Church on the journey”, marked by growing communion among religious communities, associations, movements and pastoral efforts to reach people in the concrete circumstances of their lives.

Farrell also addressed the Pope, saying that his presence among the Augustinians had “inestimable meaning” because they are “historically and spiritually, sons of the Church and sons of St Augustine”.

“We have St Augustine for a father and the Church for a mother,” Farrell said, noting that the words would sound familiar to Leo because they were the same words with which he had addressed Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.

After leaving the basilica, Pope Leo went to Piazza Duomo, where he prayed before the Blessed Sacrament and venerated the relics of St Syrus, the first bishop of Pavia.

On the steps of the cathedral, the Pope blessed a heated cradle intended for abandoned newborns and prayed before the image of Our Lady of Colombina. The then-Cardinal Prevost had been expected to visit the shrine of Colombina last year, but his election to the papacy made the visit impossible.

Speaking on the cathedral steps, Pope Leo greeted young people and the large Peruvian community present in the city.

“We all want to live in peace,” he said. “It is very important that we never lose hope. But, as St Augustine told us, if we want to change the times, if we want the world to live in peace, we must begin with ourselves.”

“That means no more words of hatred, no more insults, no more bullying, no more all those things that create war between people, between communities, between countries,” the Pope said. “We must all learn to be builders of peace and promoters of reconciliation.”

After the visit to the cathedral, Pope Leo walked to Piazza Vittoria for a meeting with the city’s residents. The beauty of Pavia, he told them, is demanding because it represents “the precious inheritance of a past that becomes a commitment for the present”.

“The city is in fact a gift and a task for those who live there,” he said.

The Pope said its schools, universities, hospitals and parishes are “significant places” that testify to welcome, education, and culture. In different ways, he said, they attest to “the same care for the person-in-community, with his dignity and his values” which unite citizens as one people and also underlie the Italian Constitution.

The city, Pope Leo said, points to “a human condition: the city is one for all, it is singular and plural”.

“To be social means to be solidary, behaving as authentic partners, motivated by the common good and not by partisan interests,” he said. “Citizens are always fellow citizens.”

Speaking before about 3,500 people gathered between the cathedral and Piazza Vittoria, the Pope warned against indifference and called for renewed participation in civic life.

“When indifference seems to break apart our community, it is necessary to renew the active participation of all in city life,” he said. “Faced with forms of degradation and civic illiteracy, we are called to share languages of dedication and service, which safeguard squares, parks and streets as places of encounter par excellence.”

Good citizenship, he said, “knows how to cultivate concord through dialogue and constructive encounter among the people and cultures that animate Pavia”.

“Today I invite each of you to repeat within yourselves: I care about our city,” the Pope said. “I care about the health of the person next to me. I care about the beauty of the place where I live. I care about the quality of life in the environments where I work and where I spend my free time.”

Leo also commended the University of Pavia, saying its students experience not “an agglomeration of knowledge” but a system capable of forming the person “without speculating on his labour”.

“To promote the sciences, in fact, means to promote man, who must always remain the protagonist of his own research,” the Pope said. “To every form of knowledge there corresponds a form of care.”

Returning to Augustine, Leo said “one cannot believe without thinking, nor is it possible to illuminate the highest questions of reason without faith”.

“With this trusting openness, human reason asks and plans,” he said. “It does not close itself within the logic of profit or domination but discovers new ways to care for itself and for the world.”

Faith, he added, reminds people that they are not “subjects of an anonymous fate” but are sustained by the certainty that God is “creator and saviour of life”.

“Thanks to your commitment, Pavia is prosperous not only in goods but also in virtues: always honour the dignity of every human life!” he said.

Pope Leo’s visit to Pavia had begun when his helicopter landed in the city shortly before 2:40 p.m., to be welcomed by local authorities and Bishop Sanguineti.

“Great emotion, an atmosphere of joy, a hot day because of the heat – we think it is a beautiful moment for everyone and an experience of faith for many,” the bishop told reporters.

The Pope started his visit at the National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy, known by its Italian acronym CNAO.

The cancer centre, inaugurated in 2010, treats patients with solid tumours that cannot be cured surgically or with traditional radiotherapy, using hadron therapy: irradiation with beams of protons and carbon ions. CNAO was the first centre dedicated to hadron therapy in Italy and remains the only one in the country able to offer carbon ion therapy.

Inside the facility, the pope greeted administrators, medical staff and several children undergoing treatment at the centre, together with their parents.

“Help the whole world understand how, when there are difficult moments, if there is not the presence and love of the family, everything is more difficult,” the Pope said. “God does not want anyone to suffer. What God promises us is that he will always be present, even when we are too weak: he sends us angels.”

Pope Leo thanked CNAO, “which works miracles”, and its staff, saying “God works in our lives also through doctors, nurses, and so many people”.

“When things are difficult,” he said, “let us place all our trust in God.”

The eye of the heart – St Augustine and the spiritual roots of Pope Leo XIV

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