Frances Xavier Cabrini
[1850-1917]
As a child in Italy, Frances launched paper boats filled with violets down the canal, calling them her “flower missionaries” and imagining they’d make their way to China. (That’s her in the photo, at the age of 10.) When she was older, she sought an audience with the pope in hopes to begin missionary work in Asia, but he famously replied: “Not to the East, but to the West.” So Frances headed instead to New York, where she became a U.S. citizen (the first one canonized), organized dozens of schools for poor Italian-Americans, and through kindness and generosity earned her place as the patron saint of immigrants. New Yorkers take note: you can view her actual remains at a church in Washington Heights — though her disembodied head rests in Rome.