She asked for one house. The cardinal said to start two.

ROME, September 28, 1887 AD — Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini got to Rome on September 25, 1887 AD. Nobody in the city knew her. She was 37. Her order of sisters, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was not yet seven years old. It began in November 1880 AD at Codogno, in Lombardy, when she and a few companions moved into a Franciscan monastery that had been left empty.

She had come to Rome to ask for three things. She wanted the Church in Rome to approve the Rule she had written for her sisters. She wanted a house in the city. And she wanted permission to send her sisters to the missions.

Her Rule set up an order meant to work anywhere, not just in one place. For an order like that, she wanted approval from Rome.

On her first day, she went straight to the Church of the Gesù. She knelt at the altar of St. Francis Xavier, the saint she had taken her name from. There she promised to go to the missions of the East with six sisters as soon as her order was approved.

“Return to Codogno”

The man she had to ask was Cardinal Lucido Maria Parocchi. He was in charge of the Church in the city of Rome for the Pope. A Jesuit priest and a Franciscan friar helped her get a meeting with him. Three days after she arrived, Cardinal Parocchi met with her. One of her sisters came along. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini handed him the Rule and asked his permission to open a house in the city.

Cardinal Parocchi answered her: “A Community founded only seven years ago wishes to establish itself in Rome and to be approved? This is too much! In Rome there are already many such Communities. And then, the funds? Do you have at least 150,000 lire […] to build a house? Return, return to Codogno: we will talk about it some other time.”

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini came out of the meeting pale, with a tear running down her cheek. As she came out, she was saying, “Deo Gratias!” (Thanks be to God). The sister with her was crying. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini told her: “Be calm; the Lord will soon change his heart.”

Two instead of one

Cardinal Parocchi had noticed how calmly and modestly she took his refusal. He took her request to Pope Leo XIII and talked it over with him. Not long after the first meeting, he met with her a second time.

Cardinal Parocchi asked her: “Are you ready to obey? Well then, found two houses instead of one.” For the first one, he offered her a school for young children. It belonged to the Pope and stood on a street called the Via Nomentana.

On October 31, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and five sisters opened their house on the Via Nomentana. It stood near the church of the martyr Saint Agnes, and there they started the school. They were very poor. More girls came than the house could hold, and the sisters slept on straw mattresses.

On December 6, Cardinal Parocchi came to the house. He was the same man who had told her to go home. He brought the Blessed Sacrament so that it would be kept in the sisters’ house.

On March 12, 1888 AD, the Church in Rome sent her order a Decree of Praise. It said the Rule she had brought had been received, and it gave her order its blessing. It came on the same day of the year that St. Francis Xavier had been declared a saint. She had knelt at his altar on her first day in Rome.