Sr. Philippa Provenzano, MSC has been documenting some little known facts about Mother Cabrini. Here she shares a story of one of Mother Cabrini’s more harrowing travels.
Groups of settlers traveling westward in covered wagons or stagecoaches were being terrorized by gangs of daring, desperate men who robbed and plundered them. When the railroad was introduced, the bandits targeted more victims. The first western train robbery occurred in 1870 in western Nevada. A gang was operating in Texas in 1904.
Mother Cabrini wrote in New Orleans, May 24, 1904: “Didn’t I tell you that I’m alive miraculously? We were traveling from Denver and as soon as we passed Dallas at night at 10:30 p.m., the enemies of the railroad, who had been hiding in the woods, fired at the train. A bullet aimed at my head fell to my side while it should have passed through my cranium. My companion was terribly frightened. She looked to see what had happened to me. Tranquil and unharmed, I asked what was happening.
“The railroad personnel kept coming to see us because they could hardly believe that I was unharmed and thought that I had someone watching over me….I told them it was the Sacred Heart to whom I had entrusted the journey.”