Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, New York
Feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
Jubilee of the Poor and World Day of the Poor
November 16, 2025
Is 58:6-11, Ps 34:1-7, Rom 12:9-16, Jn 6:24-35
To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
* Today we have the joy, at this Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini housing her sacred relics under the altar, to be able to celebrate her feast day on the closest Sunday, to thank God for her vocation, life and missionary work, and to invoke her powerful intercession. We do so on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Church’s liturgical year, on which, since 2017, has marked the World Day of the Poor. This now annual observance is augmented today by the Jubilee of the Poor within the year-long Jubilee of Hope. In his Message to help the Church prepare for this observance, Pope Leo explicitly connected the World Day of the Poor to the Jubilee of Hope and focused specifically on the loving care for the poor that is meant to flow from our Christian hope. The points he makes we can easily see illustrated in the life of the great missionary of hope, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.
* “Hope, sustained by God’s love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, turns human hearts into fertile soil where charity for the life of the world can blossom,” the Holy Father wrote, clearly describing the good and rich that led to so much fruit in the life of our saint. Pope Leo emphasized, “The Church’s tradition has constantly insisted on the circular relationship between the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. Hope is born of faith, which nourishes and sustains it on the foundation of charity, the mother of all virtues. … Charity is not just a promise; it is a present reality to be embraced with joy and responsibility. Charity engages us and guides our decisions towards the common good.” He said that each of us, like St. Frances Cabrini and the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart she founded, “is called to offer new signs of hope that will bear witness to Christian charity, just as many saints have done over the centuries.” In his recent encylical Dilexi Te, on love for the poor, he specifically mentioned St. Francis Cabrini whom he said distinguished herself, among other things, by her love for and pastoral care of migrants. The first American pope wrote, “Saint Frances Cabrini, born in Italy and a naturalized American, was the first citizen of the United States of America to be canonized. To fulfill her mission of assisting migrants, she crossed the Atlantic several times. Armed with remarkable boldness, she started schools, hospitals and orphanages from nothing for the masses of the poor who ventured into the new world in search of work. Not knowing the language and lacking the wherewithal to find a respectable place in American society, they were often victims of the unscrupulous. Her motherly heart, which allowed her no rest, reached out to them everywhere: in hovels, prisons and mines.” He noted that’s why, 75 years ago during the Jubilee of 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed her “Patroness of All Migrants.” That’s why the US Bishops, under her patronage, have urged all Americans to to make “The Cabrini Pledge” and become “Keepers of Hope” for others. St. Frances Cabrini founded hospitals, schools, orphanages, universities and so many other institutions to reach out to the most vulnerable and marginalized. Those institutions of hope, what in St. Frances Cabrini’s life was dubbed an “empire of hope,” all flows from the conviction, Pope Leo underlined, that “the poor are not a distraction for the Church,
