Saint Cabrini Home (formerly the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum or the Sacred Heart Orphanage) was a non-profit organization in West Park, Ulster County, New York, serving youth with emotional or family difficulties. The home was established by Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in 1890, and was closed in 2011.
Mother Cabrini, founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, traveled from Italy to New York City in 1889 with six of her Sisters, after Pope Leo XIII asked them to serve the burgeoning population of Italian emigrants to the United States. Within weeks of arriving in New York, the Sisters were caring for a small group of orphaned or unsupervised young girls in a donated Fifth Avenue apartment.
Realizing that they needed a larger property, with land, to provide for the children, Cabrini purchased a property in rural West Park from the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to serve as an orphanage for Italian immigrant girls. Because the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart is a begging order, all properties purchased by the Sisters are and were funded through gifts and loans, and not the Catholic Church. The West Park property included a monastery and working farm. Having run their well dry, and believing there to be no water on the grounds, the Jesuits sold the property at a fraction of its worth. Cabrini envisioned digging for a spring that would provide enough water for the fledgling orphanage. Surprisingly, the spring, found just up the hill to the west of the main road, provides water to the campus to this day. [1]
Within weeks of opening the orphanage, the Sisters began accepting children with a variety of backgrounds from Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Kingston, and other local communities. Archives from this period were maintained in a museum room on the campus. [2]
St. Cabrini Home served as the novitiate and United States home base for Mother Cabrini and her Sisters for decades. Upon her death in Chicago on December 22, 1917, Cabrini was buried at her beloved West Park campus, as per her wishes. Her body was exhumed and divided in 1933 as part of her canonization process. The major portion was transferred to the chapel of Mother Cabrini High School in New York City, and now rests in the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine adjoining the school. [3]
Mother Cabrini's canonization in 1946 brought new attention to the orphanage, attracting visitors from around the world. In 1959, the agency officially incorporated as St. Cabrini Home, Inc., which brought changes in governance. In 1968, the agency began accepting the infant brothers of girls already in care at the home. The campus program remained co-ed until 2004. St. Cabrini Home also expanded its programs to provide community-based living in group homes locally.
Throughout these changes, and as Cabrini's worldwide network of institutions grew, her Sisters relied on the support of the communities surrounding the orphanage. This support included donations of food, supplies, and money; local families volunteering to host orphaned children for the holidays; and recreational outings sponsored by local businesspeople. Eventually, much of the agency's work was performed by dedicated laypeople, and community support remains critical to the Sisters' legacy.
In 2004, the center reverted to an all-female facility, licensed by the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. [4]
On August 5, 2009, a young woman committed suicide by jumping in front of a truck on Route 9W. The Benedictine Hospital, the Daily Freeman newspaper, and several witnesses all documented that the young woman was extremely depressed and expressed an urge to kill herself prior to the incident because the hospital had released her back to the Cabrini home, despite her wishes not to return. A former employee also noted that staff had been instructed to give the same story in response to a similar incident. [5] [6]
On April 13, 2010, cottage supervisor Howard Wilson was arrested and charged with raping a 16-year-old female resident of the facility. [7] In 2011, Wilson pleaded guilty to felony rape. [8] [9]
On September 4, 2010, a rock- and debris-throwing incident led to a state trooper's patrol car being hit with a cinderblock chunk. In addition to the alleged perpetrators, two Cabrini staffers were also arrested on charges of acting in a manner injurious to a minor for, as police put it, "doing little or nothing to stop the girls during the roughly two hours that they threw rocks and other debris at cars zipping along the highway." [10]
After the suicide, rape, and stone-throwing, the Cabrini facility for young women was closed in 2011. [11] The brick school built on the estate in 1934 was demolished in 2017.
Frances Xavier Cabrini, also called Mother Cabrini, was an Italian-American Roman Catholic nun. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Catholic religious institute that was a major support to her fellow Italian immigrants to the United States. She was the first U.S. citizen to be canonized as a Saint by the Roman Catholic Church, on July 7, 1946.
St Mary's College is a private Catholic girls' school located within the "square mile" of the city of Adelaide, South Australia.
Katharine Drexel, was an American heiress, philanthropist, religious sister, educator, and foundress. She was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 2000; her feast day is observed on March 3. She was the second American to be canonized a saint and the first one born a U.S. citizen. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011.
Cabrini University is a private Roman Catholic liberal arts university in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania. The college was founded by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1957, and was named after the first American naturalized citizen saint, Mother Frances Cabrini. It was one of the first universities in the United States to make community service a graduation requirement for all undergraduates; it now has a core curriculum centered on social justice which includes their signature classes, Engagements in the Common Good, also known as ECG.
Mother Cabrini High School (MCHS) was a Catholic high school located at 701 Fort Washington Avenue between Fort Tryon Park and West 190th Street, with a facade on Cabrini Boulevard, in the Hudson Heights neighborhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, New York City.
Cabrini Boulevard spans the Manhattan neighborhood of Hudson Heights, running from West 177th Street in the south, near the George Washington Bridge, to Fort Tryon Park in the north, along an escarpment of Manhattan schist overlooking the Henry Hudson Parkway and the Hudson River. It is the westernmost city street in the neighborhood except for a one block loop formed by Chittenden Avenue, West 187th Street and West 186th Street.
St. Frances or Saint Frances may refer to:
St. Francis Xavier (1506–1552) is a Spanish Roman Catholic saint.
St. Donato Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1910, is a Catholic parish in Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The parish is still a Personal (Italian) Parish within the archdiocese. The current pastor is Rev. Ferdinand Buccafurni. About 650 families are registered, with the total congregation numbering around 1,300.
Cabrini Medical Center of New York City was created in 1973 by a merger of two Manhattan hospitals. It closed in 2008 due to financial difficulties cited by the Berger Commission, followed by a bankruptcy filing.
The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a Roman Catholic female religious congregation, founded in 1880 by Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini.
Villa Academy is a Catholic independent PreK-8th grade school located in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Seattle, Washington on a tract of land near Lake Washington. The school has a preschool, Lower School and Middle School and was founded by America's first Catholic saint, Mother Cabrini who was canonized as St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in 1946.
The St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine is located at 701 Fort Washington Avenue between Fort Tryon Park and West 190th Street, with a facade on Cabrini Boulevard, in the Hudson Heights neighborhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is dedicated to Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who in 1946 became the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
Mother Cabrini Shrine is a shrine to Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, known as Mother Cabrini, located in Golden, Colorado, United States.
The Church of St. Joachim is a former Roman Catholic parish church under the authority of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 26 Roosevelt Street, in Manhattan, New York City.
Villa Cabrini Academy was a private Catholic elementary and high school for girls in the United States that operated from 1937 to 1970, under the authority of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
St. Thomas–St. Vincent Orphanage was an orphanage located in Anchorage, Kentucky, best known for allegations of child sexual and physical abuse by one priest, seven nuns, and five laymen, between the 1930s and 1970s. It opened with the merger of St. Thomas Orphanage and St. Vincent Orphanage in 1955 and closed in 1983 as a result of rising costs and increased government services for orphans.