Mission in Manhattan – Biopic “The Pope’s Messenger” tells of the first saint of the USA

Little Paolo, crying, pushes his terminally ill mother through the mud on a cart, desperately calling for help – in Italian. No one pays any attention to him, and why should they? The hospital doesn't accept Italians. His mother dies and is taken away.

A heartbreaking scene. The boy is one of the street children struggling to survive in one of Manhattan's worst slums: "Five Points," the epicenter of crime and prostitution, poverty and neglect.

In 1889, the founder of the order of the "Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart," Francesca Xaviera Cabrini (Christiana Dell'Anna), ended up there. In the biographical melodrama "The Pope's Messenger" (with an unfortunately intrusive soundtrack), Alejandro Monteverde takes a look back at this woman's social commitment during her early years in America. It was driven less by missionary zeal than by the desire to provide orphans with a life of dignity.

She had originally wanted to go to China, but Pope Leo XIII sent her to America, where she was primarily tasked with caring for immigrants of Italian descent. The film depicts her struggles – including against church leaders like the Irish archbishop, the mayor, and autocratic politicians. Francesca refuses to be intimidated even by brutal pimps.

At the end of the century, she opened the first orphanage and later the famous Columbus Hospital in New York, which was open to Italian migrants who otherwise had no access to medical care. Against all odds, she realized her vision. She even convinced the editor-in-chief of the New York Times to report on the horrific conditions.

It's not religiosity that lies at the heart of her work, but humanism. A Mother Courage who "ventures into places where she has no business," as her opponents complain. "It's a shame you're a woman," she is told. And she counters, "Men could never do what we do."

She died in 1917 and was canonized in 1946, the first US citizen. The film about her fight for education, social integration, and the preservation of cultural identity also tells of self-help and social participation—important means of emancipation for Francesca.

In passing, the biopic offers a reckoning with the "American Dream," which only a few were privileged to experience. It's easy to draw a connection to the present day. While "guinea pigs" or "Itacans," as they were contemptuously called, were considered second-class citizens back then, today, in Trump's America, it's the virtually powerless migrants from Latin America who must endure exploitation and racism.

“The Pope's Messenger”, directed by Alejandro Monteverde, with Christiana Dell'Anna and David Morse, 142 minutes, FSK 12