Feast 13 November
First American citizen saint. The immigrants’ mother.
Sacred art
The portrait kept with St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is the image this library has of Frances. The honour goes to the person, and through the person to God. It is not a machine, and it is not a substitute for the life written below.
Died 1917 in Chicago. Schools, hospitals, orphanages on two continents. Canonized 1946. Patroness of immigrants.
If it belongs to Frances, it is here, with a door back into the story.
Lanciano, Abruzzo8th century (c. 750)
The most famous Eucharistic miracle in the West: a doubting monk sees the Host become Flesh and the wine Blood. The relics are still reserved — and were studied in the twentieth century. They are not the reason the Church believes in the Eucharist.
2 studied signs on this image
Santa Francesca Romana, Roman ForumDied 1440
A noblewoman, wife, foundress of the Oblates of Tor de’ Specchi. Her body is under the altar in the church that looks onto the Forum — a Roman matron who would not leave the city to become holy.
Isola del Gran SassoDied 1862; body at Isola del Gran Sasso
A Passionist student, dead at twenty-four of tuberculosis, whose body was found preserved and is kept in the sanctuary at Isola. Patron of youth, of students, of Abruzzo.
San Giovanni RotondoStigmata 1918; died 1968
A Capuchin friar who bore the five wounds of Christ for fifty years, heard confessions for ten hours a day, and was accused, banned, filmed, loved, and finally canonized. The most investigated mystic of modern times.
San Francesco, LancianoLinoli reports 1971 and 1981; event 8th century
The upper relic at Lanciano is a thin, round piece of flesh, kept in a monstrance. In 1970–71 a pathologist, with permission, said what it is: human heart muscle. This study is that sentence, unpacked, without turning a microscope into a sacrament.
A studied sign
San Francesco, LancianoLinoli 1971; the five are the traditional count
Under the flesh, in a crystal chalice, the blood of Lanciano sits in five irregular globules. Tradition reads five as the wounds, and says that each piece weighs as much as all five together. The laboratory can confirm blood. The weighing is the town’s old homily.
A studied sign
