In his 1919 poem “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats describes our fledgling modernity as follows: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold … The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." The life of Mother Francesca Cabrini, who is the subject of the new film Cabrini, provides a one-woman refutation of Yeats’ perspective. 

Director Alejandro Monteverde’s new film is a poignant depiction of the life of this first American Catholic saint. Played with grace and gravitas by Italian actress Cristiana Dell’Anna, Cabrini becomes the center-that-holds in Five Points, a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan where poor Italian immigrants lived “worse than rats” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.