Reviewed by Bill Bray
CIS News Editor-in-Chief
CABRINI from Angel Studios and director Alejandro Monteverde, is another amazing faith film that deserves to be a huge hit during the “2024 Lenten and Easter Film Season.” Monteverde, whose award-winning Sound of Freedom attracted millions of evangelicals to theaters last year, has done it again with this biopic of the first Catholic saint in the USA.
Cabrini is a deeply spiritual, worshipful experience that challenges the viewer to a life of daring service to Christ a deeper devotion to the Lord.
The film joins five others that Hollywood is directing at Christian audiences this Easter holiday season: Hollywood, Teach Us to Pray, Times of Fire:7 Churches of Revelation, Seven Churches of Revelation Deception, 47 Days with Jesus, and now, Cabrini. These films reveal that Hollywood is experiencing something of a spiritual revival.
A word of advice to Christian audiences and movie-goers. Many local theaters are running these faith-based films reluctantly for limited time periods. Sometimes only for one or two days. In some locations, they are being run only once a day, not continuously.
So, when you see one of these films being shown at a Cineplex near you, rush quickly to your local mall and catch the film on the big screen while you can. Bring other Christian friends with you, ask your pastor to announce these films in the church bulletin, and organize “movie-parties” to patronize Christ-friendly, faith-friendly films. Finally, tell your theater manager that you appreciate him booking family-friendly, inspirational films.
Francesca Cabrini was born in Northern Italy in 1850. She had a powerful missionary calling on her life and lived by the words of the Apostle Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13, KJV). She was the first Catholic woman missionary. Because of a humanitarian crisis among immigrant children, she was sent to New York in 1889 by the Pope along with five missionary sisters to reach the desperately poor Italian immigrants in the slums of Five Points.
The film is lavishly and beautifully photographed, both in the Italian and American sequences and the musical score is outstanding.
It is probably the most moving missionary biopic ever made and I expect that it will help foster a revival in Christian missions – both Catholic and evangelical Christian.
It is hard to see this film and not feel the tug of God on your heart to serve the Lord in places of great need. Mother Cabrini had a life-long terror of water and drowning so it is amazing that she made 23 trans-Atlantic trips to help the suffering Italian community in New York City.
She was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in Seattle,1909, and died in Chicago at age 67 of chronic endocarditis. Over the course of 34-years she established 67 hospitals, orphanages, and schools.
To Protestants and Catholics alike, her life was an amazing testimony of what God can do with a woman whose life was totally surrendered to Christ. (ENDS)