Cabrini Day in 2025

When is Cabrini Day?

From 2020, Colorado passed legislation to replace Columbus Day as a state holiday with Cabrini Day. In March 2020, Gov. Jared Polis signed into law House Bill 1031, which renames the holiday.

The first Monday in October will honor Frances Xavier Cabrini, who created 67 schools, hospitals, and orphanages in the United States and South and Central America throughout her lifetime.

History of Cabrini Day

Frances Xavier Cabrini MSC, also called Mother Cabrini, was an Italian-American Roman Catholic nun. Born on July 15th 1850 in Lombardy, Italy, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Catholic religious institute that was a major support to her fellow Italian immigrants to the United States.

Mother Cabrini founded the first orphanage in Denver, which is now a shrine. 

Mother Cabrini died in 1917 (at the Columbus Hospital in Chicago) and was canonized on July 7th 1946, by Pope Pius XII. She is the patron saint of immigrants.

In 2017, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper set aside a day in December to honor Mother Cabrini on the 100th anniversary of her death.

Cabrini Day is the first paid state holiday to honor a woman.

Colorado was the first state to celebrate Columbus Day in 1907, many years before it would become a national holiday in 1937.