-Ruth Institute Staff
Of the 150 statues honoring people who built New York City, only 5 of them are of women. Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, took part in a commission
(She Built NYC) to increase the number of statues of women who helped build New York City and honor
their contributions. They opened the process to the public and received over 2,000 nominations, of which Saint Frances Cabrini received the lion’s
share of nominations (219). Instead of honoring the
public’s will and Mother Cabrini’s multiple contributions, the commission charged with honoring women, chose two biological males, Sylvia Rivera and
Marsha P. Johnson.
Dr. Roback Morse discussed the decision this way, “Calling yourself ‘transgendered’ doesn’t make you a woman if you have the DNA of a man. Adopting a woman’s name and dressing
like a woman won’t work either. Gender is a matter of biology, not belief.
There are countless women who have sacrificed their time, energies, and efforts to build New York City. Saint Frances Cabrini is one notable example (among
many) of just that. Born in the north of Italy in 1850, she was the youngest (and most frail) of the 13 children, though one of only four to survive. Though she was originally denied her application to enter the Daughter of
the Sacred Heart at Arluno, she later took religious orders and began missionary service.
As a child, she had always harbored the ambition to journey the world and be a missionary. When she was granted an audience with Pope Leo XIII, he counseled
that instead of establishing missions in China, she should go to New York City and help the masses of suffering Italian immigrants. Traveling with six other sisters and armed with little more than her grit and determination, they arrived
in America to improve the situation of the immigrants.
Though she faced tremendous odds, she was instrumental in helping the poor and the orphans.
The clergy in New York were initially unsupportive of her efforts, though they granted her some room to create an orphanage. She and her fellow missionaries,
motivated by the terrible living conditions (and loss of religiousness) of the immigrants, were able to organize catechism and education classes for
the immigrants, as well as helping provide for the orphans. Additionally, they set out to found a hospital.
To fund her efforts Saint Frances Cabrini and those in her order, would walk
the (sometimes dangerous) slums of Little Italy in Manhattan. Though they were often rebuffed, they were ultimately successful. Most of the donations
they received were small, suggesting that Saint Frances Cabrini was truly a woman of the people. Ultimately, Saint Frances Cabrini’s tireless efforts
were recognized and demand for her abilities grew, both in the United States and the world.
While she may have had frail health, she was no pushover. During the construction of a hospital
in Chicago, the contractors she was working with tried to best her during the project. Instead of meekly accepting their less-than-honest intentions,
she fired them on the spot. For the next several weeks, she was seen stumping about the scaffoldings, directing the workers.
In all, she was responsible for founding 67 institutions, all dedicated to caring for the
underprivileged. These institutions were located in New York, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Golden (CO), Los Angeles, Philadelphia, in Central and South America, in France, Spain and Italy. Like the many immigrants
who built America with their efforts, she became an American citizen in 1909, and passed away in 1917 at one of the hospitals she had helped build.
Saint Frances Cabrini was a figure in whom people of all faiths and no faiths could find commonality. She lifted the immigrants, taught the destitute,
and even stood up to her superiors, when they were wrong. She said,
in a letter to the sisters in Italy, “Let us break, by the fire of ardent charity, the heavy chains that bind these poor souls to the terrible slavery
of the devil, and we shall see that our efforts are not in vain.” Clearly, she was a woman dedicated to improving the condition the lonely and suffering.
Instead of going with the voice of the people (and common sense), the commission decided, to choose not one, but two biological males. The reason for choosing
two more men? According to the She Built NYC website, Marsha P. Johnson is being honored by “capturing
the attention of Andy Warhol”, and both Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera are being honored for “being involved in the stonewall riots” and “founding
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.”
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse said of this, “Sexual Revolutionaries have found a new way to advance their agenda – publicly-funded monuments honoring individuals who represent gender
confusion and whose chief achievement is political activism promoting their cause.”
It’s a pity and a shame that She Built NYC ignored the massive and compassionate contributions of a biological woman to New York City and the world, in
order to promote two gender confused men. That’s erasing women, not empowering them.