The shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini was built in response to pilgrimages of people coming to visit the room at Columbus Hospital in Chicago where she worked for a time during her lifetime. The hospital was closed and demolished in 2002 to be replaced with high rise luxury housing, but the shrine was left in place and the entrance to the shrine is in the ground floor of one of the high rises while the shrine itself is tucked behind the towers.
I arrived at the tail end of a talk on Pope Leo’s apostolic exhortation on love for the poor, Dilexi te, given by a sister from the religious order that Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini before the Mass which was celebrated by the rector of the shrine, Daniel Turley, the bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Chulucanas in Peru. Like Pope Leo, he was born in Chicago before moving to South America as part of his ministry and is a member of the Augustinian order just like Leo. I have to confess that while I’d heard of the Augustinians before Leo, I’d not really paid much attention to them and I’ve been a bit surprised how much the order has been popping up since then.
Leave a Reply