Mother St. Frances X. Cabrini Shrine (Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus)

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini — the Italian-born foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus — first saw the property at the northwest edge of Manhattan in 1899 while riding through what was then a remote, hilly stretch of upper New York. She purchased the land and the existing mansion at what is now 701 Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard, naming it Sacred Heart Villa. Mother Cabrini ran it as a boarding school for middle- and upper-class girls, using the tuition to subsidize her free schools and orphanages for poor and immigrant children in the city; the buildings also served as a receiving house for orphans. Cabrini is said to have told the sisters, 'I shall be buried here,' though in fact she died at Columbus Hospital in Chicago on December 22, 1917, at the age of 67. Her body was transported by train back to New York and entombed at the Missionary Sisters' Sacred Heart Orphanage in West Park, New York. In 1930 the old Fort Washington mansion was replaced by a new building — Mother Cabrini High School — which opened at 701 Fort Washington Avenue. Three years later, in 1933, as her cause for sainthood advanced, her remains were exhumed from the rural West Park grave and translated to the chapel of the new high school. Cabrini was beatified by Pope Pius XI on November 13, 1938 (the same year the street to the west of the school was renamed Cabrini Boulevard in her honor). At that point her remains were placed in a glass reliquary beneath the school's altar. She was canonized on July 7, 1946, becoming the first naturalized U.S. citizen to be declared a saint; The New York Times reported that some 45,000 people passed through the high school chapel that day to venerate her relics. Four years later, in 1950, Pope Pius XII named her 'Patroness of Immigrants.' Her feast day is celebrated each year on November 13. The post-canonization flood of pilgrims quickly overwhelmed the school chapel. In 1957 construction began on a separate shrine building adjacent to the high school, designed by the architectural firm of De Sina & Pellegrino. The shrine was completed and consecrated in 1959, and Mother Cabrini's remains were translated one final time to the bronze-and-glass reliquary casket beneath the main altar, where approximately 80% of her bones rest today, with her face and hands sculpted in wax over her habit. The shrine was built adjoining the school in 1957–1960. The original Mother Cabrini High School closed in 2014. The building is now leased to Success Academy Washington Heights (a charter elementary school), and — in keeping with Cabrini's original model — the rental revenue is used to support the Missionary Sisters' missions abroad (including work with refugees in Uganda, schools in Latin America, and health facilities in Guatemala, Eswatini, and Ethiopia). In December 2024 the Archdiocese of New York designated the shrine an official sacred pilgrimage site for the 2025 Jubilee of Hope, allowing the faithful to obtain a plenary indulgence locally instead of traveling to Rome.