July is an important month for St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, a nun who was known for her work for immigrants in New York City and who’s the namesake of a health foundation the Archdiocese of New York started last year. Mother Cabrini, as she is commonly known (she started her own order of nuns), was born on July 15, 1850 in Italy and was canonized on July 7, 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

An immigrant herself, Mother Cabrini wasn’t accepted into religious life at first because of her poor health. Undeterred, she eventually received permission to start her own order in Italy, called the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She then gained an audience in 1889 with Pope Leo XIII, who urged her to go to the United States to care for the immigrants suffering there.