The face of God in ‘Cabrini’
Does the movie “secularize a saint”? Reckoning with the curious dearth of God talk and overt religiosity in this faith-based biopic about the founder of a religious community
“If I have one critique of this movie, it’s that there should be more God.” With that sentence, social media priest Father Mike Schmitz introduces a caveat into his otherwise enthusiastic YouTube appreciation of Alejandro Monteverde’s Cabrini. While Catholic response to the film has been largely positive, certainly in my experience, Father Schmitz isn’t the only one with concerns. On the website Catholic Culture, Thomas V. Mirus argues at length that “Cabrini secularizes a saint,” effectively portraying her as a heroine of feminism and social justice, but not Catholic faith—an indictment he considers “a fatal flaw.” Other devout critics made similar arguments.
Certainly, for a movie about a religious sister and a founder of a religious community, let alone a faith-based movie from Angel Studios (best known for The Chosen), Cabrini is strikingly bereft of religious language, ideas, and praxis. God is mentioned only a few times, and Jesus only alluded to. Prayer is implied, but directly depicted only in a brief Latin grace before meals (the familiar “Benedic, Domine, nos” or “Bless us, O Lord”). We see Mother Cabrini’s sisters teaching children, but no evidence of catechesis. And, while we learn a couple of the sisters’ names, the name of their community (the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) is never so much as mentioned.
Years ago, writing about The Seventh Chamber, a movie about Saint Edith Stein, I observed that empathy—the subject of Stein’s doctoral dissertation and a major focus of her philosophical inquiry—is never mentioned in the dialogue. Isn’t this, I wondered, like making a movie about Einstein and never mentioning relativity? If so, would a movie about the founder of a religious community consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that never mentioned Jesus be like an Einstein movie that never mentioned science?
This might be overstating the case, but not by much. It’s fair to say that cinema is a visual medium, and, in a movie with scenes set in the Vatican and other religious environments, there will be crosses, crucifixes, and other sacred images—for example, the Sacred Heart image looking down over the dining hall of the sisters’ orphanage in Five Points. It’s also fair to say that a statue of an ancient Roman soldier in an establishing shot outside Rome’s Palazzo di Giustizia is given more visual prominence and symbolic significance than any sacred image I noticed.
This shot comes immediately after a highly significant scene (discussed in detail below) in which Mother Cabrini, struggling with hopelessness over the apparent downfall of her work, is reminded of her determination to “fight with every last ounce” of her strength and exhorted to put on her “armor” (i.e., her habit, cape, and wimple). The figure of the Roman soldier, looming in the foreground as Mother Cabrini enters the building for a fateful confrontation with the Italian Senate, suggests Cabrini’s renewed warrior spirit. (That the Senate actually meets in the Palazzo Madama—not the Palazzo di Giustizia where the shot was filmed—underscores the intentionality of the imagery.) No sacred image is given similarly momentous treatment.
Key lines
More significant than the sacred imagery, on the other hand, are a handful of key lines of dialogue: lines that, if we wish to see it, can provide substantial interpretive context for the rest of the film.
Start with an invocation of Philippians 4:13, Mother Cabrini’s motto and the motto of her congregation: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” This line—spoken by Mother Cabrini to her sisters after a potentially life-threatening collapse—resonates with the film’s emphasis on Mother Cabrini’s physical frailty. From her first moments onscreen, Cristiana Dell’Anna’s Mother Cabrini is a study in weary determination. Suffering from compromised lungs due to a near-drowing incident in childhood, she is prone to violent coughing fits, and in moments of weakness she moves with ginger care even in simple actions like donning her wimple. Yet at other times she pushes herself with abandon, digging in a deep pit late into the night in a search for water on the property purchased from Jesuits for her orphanage. Does the film celebrate her own toughness, as some of the film’s devout critics allege—or, as others see it, God’s power made perfect in her weakness? How does Mother Cabrini herself understand her resilience? The answer may depend on the weight the viewer chooses to give to that quotation of Philippians 4:13.
Another noteworthy line comes in a pivotal early exchange with Pope Leo XIII. “Mary Magdalene brought news of the Resurrection to the Apostles,” Mother Cabrini says. “If the Lord confided that mission to a woman, why should he not confide in us?” Shortly after this, Mother Cabrini warns her sisters, “As women, without men, we will be expected to fail. More than ever, we must trust in ourselves and in the purpose of our mission.” On my first viewing I was struck that she talks about trusting “in ourselves” without mentioning trusting in God. Yet (as another viewer pointed out to me) the additional thought of “trusting in the purpose of our mission” brings further nuance to the line. Cabrini has already spoken of “mission” as what is “confided” by the Lord; seen in that light, trusting in “the purpose of our mission” means trusting in God’s purposes for them—an interpretation strengthened by the later quotation from Philippians.
A third significant line comes in an explosive exchange with a contemptuous bureaucratic opponent stonewalling Mother Cabrini’s attempts to meet with the city’s unprincipled mayor (played by John Lithgow). In this scene Mother Cabrini passionately denounces her complacent adversaries as “little men” who are “too blind to understand the truth that we are all human beings, we are all the same—children of God—and you dismiss us at your own peril!” For me, this line illuminates responses to Cabrini from viewers who tell me that they find Christ palpably present throughout the film in the interactions of the characters. For all the sacred images adorning the film’s settings, some viewers see the face of Christ most clearly in Mother Cabrini and her sisters, and in the imago Dei in every human person revealed through the dignity and respect with which the sisters treat the least of these, from the ragged orphans living in (or under) the streets of Five Points to Romana Maggiora Vergano’s Italian-American prostitute Vittoria.
Some may ask, in Mirus’s words: “Would Cabrini have been much different had it been made by a non-Christian who admired Cabrini’s social work but didn’t care for her faith?” To this it might be replied: Whenever anyone feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless, or clothes the naked, they do it to Christ—and so, in a movie about people doing these things, whoever makes it or whatever their intentions, Christ cannot be absent. Cabrini’s affirmation that we are all “children of God” makes this point explicit—as does a fourth line in Cabrini’s confrontation with the Italian Senate. Overtly alluding to the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, Mother Cabrini declares, “At the hour of our death, we will all be asked one question: What did we do for the poor? The sick? The homeless? Those stripped of dignity? What did we do?” Here again the film authorizes us to see Cabrini’s pursuit of social justice as service to Christ.
If these four lines are seen as interpretive keys to the film, then one can say that Christ is evident everywhere. It’s also possible to downplay and minimize these lines, as Cabrini’s Catholic critics do. There’s a reason people sometimes say, of others who experienced a movie very differently than they did, that they “must have seen a different movie.” Sometimes what we see in a movie, or don’t see, depends on what we bring to it, and differing perceptions can be equally valid.
It’s fair to say, I think, that the movie is somewhat conflicted. Authorial intention is a question of limited importance at best in any art form, but above all with film because of its inherently collaborative nature. Cabrini reflects in different ways the varying intentions of director Alejandro Monteverde, screenwriter Rod Barr, its producers, the actors, and other collaborators. One collaborator I spoke to was Monsignor Paul Bochicchio, a spiritual consultant to the film and chaplain to the filmmakers, whose contributions included advising on the script and giving a retreat to a number of the filmmakers. Msgr. Bochicchio confirmed to me, as others have reported, that the producers, including Jonathan Sanger and executive producer J. Eustace Wolfington, intentionally sought to emphasize Mother Cabrini’s achievements as an entrepreneur and humanitarian and to limit the religious content of the film in the hope of reaching a wider audience. But Msgr. Bochicchio also indicated that Monteverde genuinely wanted to honor Mother Cabrini’s faith. How these varying intentions are reflected in the final film is a question viewers may answer differently. In at least one key moment Msgr. Bochicchio says he himself played a decisive role: He told me that there was discussion about cutting Mother Cabrini’s quotation from Philippians, but when the priest objected that the line was essential as the “mantra of her life,” the scene was retained!
The face of the Father
There is, finally, one pivotal sequence—by my lights the film’s most interesting sequence both cinematically and theologically—that I believe is best seen as depicting God himself taking an active role.
The moment in question comes immediately before Mother Cabrini’s appearance before the Italian Senate, in the scene in which Vittoria urges her to put on her armor and fight with her last ounce of strength. This sequence represents a dramatic low point in which Mother Cabrini feels defeated and weary unto death—a mood represented by recurring flashback imagery, seen throughout the film, of young Francesca’s near-drowning incident. In an earlier scene Mother Cabrini has spoken of the looming threat of her death, and how “every time when I work I seem to be able to steal one more day of life. If I rest, however, that’s when dying feels very real.” At this low point, following yet another failed attempt to raise funds needed for continued papal support for her mission, Mother Cabrini returns forlornly to her sisters, responding to their startled expressions of concern by saying, with dire simplicity, “I need to rest”—and a drowning flashback confirms her despondent state.
The next shot finds her the following morning in an elaborately painted chapel, presumably after praying through much of the night, though of course this isn’t directly depicted. As Vittoria speaks to her about fighting and armor, the drowning imagery returns for the last time … and here, finally, we get a resolution. In this depiction, growing light from above prompts young Francesca to look up—and, through the rippling surface, she sees a man looking down at her, his face shadowed by a floppy-brimmed hat. He reaches down, his hand plunging beneath the surface. She takes his hand, and he pulls her up. In the next shot we see Mother Cabrini, still fragile but resolved, donning her wimple and preparing for her Senate confrontation.
On the literal level, the identity of the dimly glimpsed man who rescued young Francesca from drowning as a child isn’t specified. The default assumption would be that he is her father; he is at least a father figure. Symbolically, it seems clear that the viewer is meant to understand that it is not merely the emotional power of Vittoria’s inspirational speech that rallies Mother Cabrini from her despondency; it is her Father in heaven who reaches down and lifts her up, renewing her hope and determination. Here, seen as through a glass darkly, the face of God is visible in Cabrini, not only in the heroic and loving actions of the characters and the imago Dei in the least of these, but in divine action in the protagonist’s soul. When the next shot foregrounds that statue of the Roman soldier, it is God himself who has restored Mother Cabrini’s warrior spirit.
Art and spirituality are not a zero sum game
I think Cabrini could and should have dug deeper, both artistically and spiritually—and I see the two as related, not in competition. A recurring complaint among mainstream critics who were critical of the film was dissatisfaction with Mother Cabrini as character lacking in dramatic interest. Depicting her prayer life, and with it her emotional and spiritual struggles, could have made her more compelling and relatable as well as a more effective witness to faith. Allowing more God talk could have developed Mother Cabrini’s motivations as a character while also expanding the dramatic theme of prejudice and marginalization by exploring America’s legacy of anti-Catholicism. Depicting the sisters’ communal prayer might have helped to develop Mother Cabrini’s community, making the sisters less anonymous and revealing more of Mother Cabrini as a character in relationship to her peers.
In short, the producers’ notion of trying to appeal to a wider audience by limiting the film’s religious content is misguided. Admittedly, it’s not easy to cite an effective counterpoint. Mirus mentions Terrence Malick’s 2019 A Hidden Life, a transcendent, nearly three-hour art film about Blessed Franz Jägerstätter that made less than $5 million globally. Going further back, Of Gods and Men, a sublime 2011 French-language drama about Trappist monks in Algeria—directed, significantly, by nonbeliever Xavier Beauvois, but drenched in religious content and themes—made over $40 million worldwide but less than $4 million domestically, an unlikely path for an American faith-based film about America’s first saint. At this writing Cabrini has made over $18 million, nearly all domestically—not necessarily a bad showing for a faith-based film, but a major disappointment given the film’s unusually large $50 million budget. (By contrast, Monteverde’s previous Angel Studios production, the controversial Jim Caviezel child-trafficking drama Sound of Freedom, grossed a staggering $250 million globally against a mere $14 million budget.)
A somewhat less remote analogy might be Mel Gibson’s 2016 World War II movie Hacksaw Ridge, which emphasizes the struggles of Seventh-Day Adventist Desmond Doss to serve in the Army without betraying his religious convictions against carrying a weapon. While a Mel Gibson war movie starring Andrew Garfield may have broader built-in appeal than a faith-based movie about women religious, Gibson made his film for $10 million less than Cabrini and grossed over $180 million globally, including over $67 million in the US. Hacksaw Ridge at least illustrates how a film aimed at a popular audience can lean into a protagonist’s religious beliefs and motivations without alienating viewers.
All of that said, as a rule a film that connects powerfully with some thoughtful viewers should be more credited for what it does do than blamed for what others consider its sins of omission. For many viewers, Cabrini is an edifying portrait of perseverance in love of neighbor, subtly but definitely linked to love of God. It’s also lucidly, luminously filmed, impressively designed, and well acted. That’s enough to commend it to receptive viewers—and to make me glad I saw it. Whatever Monteverde does next, I’m more interested after seeing Cabrini than I was before.
Interesting that you cite Hacksaw Ridge near the end of this essay. I haven't seen the film since its original release, but my vague recollection is that that film downplayed the religious element, too.
To quote from Richard Brody's review in The New Yorker:
"The Dosses are Seventh-Day Adventists, but the film gives no sense of a religious community—or, if there is one, whether the Dosses are isolated in theirs. Is Desmond alone an outlier in faith? (The extended, meticulous portrait of the life of devout Christians in a small Tennessee farming town is among the best things in Howard Hawks’s 'Sergeant York,' from 1941, in which Gary Cooper plays a conscientious objector who becomes a battlefield hero during the First World War.) . . .
"The power of religion becomes a blank, with no particulars, no details, no substance. Desmond’s devotion to the Bible yields no parables, no diction, no favorite stories, no specific references. Throughout his service, Desmond carries a small Bible that Dorothy gave him and into which she slipped an inscribed photo of herself—and, although he opens that Bible often, Gibson shows him staring at the picture, not contemplating the text. Desmond’s devotion is depicted as devoid of practice and thought; he sticks to the two Commandments that are the cornerstones of his faith. (The one about keeping the Sabbath leads to a droll yet earnest subplot.) Doss’s heroic actions are marvels; the faith that motivates those actions is not conveyed."
Being in the faith film distribution business unfortunately there can be an inverse relationship to the amount of religion to the broadness of appeal. I'm sure the devout filmmakers of Cabrini would have loved to put a lot more in, however they know to many that would turn them off and thus limit its reach. Therefore there's a bit of a tradeoff here. That said, if you're as big as Mel Gibson and have the Jews attacking you and all Christians backing you, you'll probably come out ok. I'd say as good Christian film producers it's our job to touch hearts to the point that they see they do need Christ in their lives and hopefully that points them toward a church.