If you’d like to see a movie about a saint utterly gutted of religious meaning this Lenten season, piqued by a perverse curiosity of what such a spectacle might look like, then go see Cabrini. It’s quite the marvel: a film about the first American citizen to become a saint, a woman who did everything for her dear Jesus, that somehow completely ignores the very Jesus Christ who inspired her.
I didn’t hear a single mention of Jesus in Cabrini. If there was, I could be easily forgiven for missing it. After all, this is not a religious movie.
Then what is Cabrini? Its message is thoroughly modernized, a 21st-century American tale. It’s a feminist movie, pure and simple, about a woman who — always — looks exclusively to herself rather than to God for her inspiration and ability to overcome every obstacle.
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