St. Mother Cabrini's Rocky Mountain High-Away

Mother Cabrini Shrine, Golden, Colo.

On a hillside overlooking Denver, in a spot not far from Buffalo Bill's grave and the famed Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater, there's a peaceful place of Catholic prayer and contemplation.

It's the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, the original capital of Colorado, and it was founded by the tough-loving saint herself. As her feast day is upon us — Nov. 13 — now is a good time for a virtual visit to this Rocky Mountain haven.

Visiting friends in Denver gave me the opportunity to learn how a 22-foot Sacred Heart statue came to be atop a mountain, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It is a clear sign of an act of God: The foundress wanted to go one way with her life, but God sent her in the complete opposite direction.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was schooled in her native Italy by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart and grew up in awe of missionary tales involving far-off lands. She, too, wanted to be a missionary, so she became a teacher and tried to join their order. They refused her due to poor health. At age 30 she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Traveling to Rome, she asked Pope Leo XIII to send her and her sisters to China. Noting that Italians were emigrating by the thousands to America, the Pope said, in so many words: China would be fine, but you're more needed in New York.

Mother Cabrini arrived in the United States on March 31, 1889, and got right to work setting up schools and orphanages in and around New York. But her drive was such that no one part of the country could contain her. Bishop Nicholas Matz invited her to Denver in 1902 to begin a school in the parish of Mount Carmel. She built the Queen of Heaven orphanage for girls in 1905 and bought land in Golden, on the outskirts of the city, to create a summer orphan camp. Today the stone house and original barn are still there — the first things you see, in fact, as you ascend the mountain road. A sign is visible from the highway; it shows a flaming, crowned heart and urges pilgrims to “make Christ the heart of the world.”

Farther along, the main building consists of a church upstairs and a gift shop, museum and cafeteria downstairs. The museum displays some of Mother Cabrini's belongings: her desk, bed, dresser and wash basin, some clothes, a chair and cane. The church contains a representation of the Sacred Heart set on the wall behind the main altar. Christ stands atop the globe as the Holy Spirit descends upon him. A statue of Mother Cabrini stands to one side. She's always recognizable standing in a long black dress, cape and bonnet tied in a bow at her neck. Her hands are folded in prayer above a large silver cross.

In a large side chapel, a series of stained-glass windows depicts key moments in Mother Cabrini's early life — her birth, first Communion, experiences as a young girl and as a new religious. Another section shows her sitting aboard the ship coming to America, writing a letter on deck as seagulls fly above the waters. In the next she arrives in New York with an immigrant child at her side, the Statue of Liberty and ship in the background.

Three central windows show the Assumption, Pentecost and Our Lady's Coronation by the Trinity. My favorite windows were of Frances kneeling below the Sacred Heart, a white ribbon above reading, “Take courage, I am with you” and of Frances at the knee of Pope Leo XIII, who sits on a throne and places one hand on her head. The white ribbon here says, “Not to the East but to the West.”

The last cycle shows Frances on horseback in the mountains, her death in Chicago, aiding a family with her portrait on their wall and her glory in heaven.

Atlantic Crossings

In the church vestibule is a Sacred Heart statue brought to Colorado by St. Frances Xavier Cabrini herself, opposite old pictures and newspaper articles, including one showing her canonization at the Vatican on July 7, 1946, by Pope Pius XII.

Mother Cabrini had become a missionary, traveling through Europe, South America and across the United States in response to the need for schools, hospitals, child care centers and orphanages. Some 67 houses and 24 transatlantic journeys later, Mother Cabrini died on Dec. 22, 1917. How many times Frances must have invoked the Sacred Heart, in all her travels to and from Europe and across the United States. How fitting it was, then, that on her last visit to Golden, where she had created a summer camp, she climbed the mountain and left stones in the shape of a heart.

Today, atop the same mountain, a wide heart formed of stones rests under glass as a memorial to this humble daughter of Italy who abandoned her lifelong dream to become a missionary in another land. Near this heart is a small chapel with a relic of Mother Cabrini, above which rises a 22-foot statue of the Sacred Heart. Surrounding this area, the Ten Commandments are set in picturesque stone alcoves.

From this square atop the mountain, you can see Denver and the beautiful mountains for which it's famous. Benches invite pilgrims to relax after climbing 373 steps (with a bench on each) wending up the Way of the Cross and mysteries of the rosary.

Along the 373 steps, I found hearts and crosses formed out of a variety of materials: stones, wood, memorials left by families and groups, flowers and plants, tiny angel statues. One particularly memorable plaque said, “Love is the measure of the journey.”

Below is the grotto, a candle-filled votive shrine with a Mother Cabrini statue inside and Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette outdoors. From the Mother Cabrini Spring here, visitors may drink or bottle some of the miraculous water Frances discovered on this lonely site. (There's a one-quart limit and you must bring your own container.)

The shrine is still run by Mother Cabrini's nuns, who offer all a place of warm hospitality, refreshing rest and contemplative prayer.

Mary Soltis writes from Parma, Ohio.