Living Faith Without Fear: What We Can Learn from Mother Cabrini

Girlfriends (A Podcast for Catholic Women)

Danielle Bean

Religion & Spirituality, Parenting, Kids & Family

4.9 • 810 Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Girlfriends, I’m talking with author and teacher Amy Cattapan about her beautiful new book, Hope Without Borders: A Spiritual Retreat with St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. If you’ve never explored the writings or spirituality of Mother Cabrini before, you are in for a treat. Amy shares how this powerhouse saint, America’s first canonized citizen, lived a life of missionary zeal, deep Ignatian prayer, and relentless trust in God’s providence.

We talk about how Amy first connected with Cabrini (hint: Italian roots + Chicago + Catholic school kids!), how the retreat journals of Mother Cabrini provide a window into her spiritual life, and what women today can learn from her bold perseverance and profound devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Whether you're juggling work, family, ministry—or all three—Mother Cabrini’s example will inspire you to press forward in faith and seek rest in Jesus. Amy and I also talk about practical ways to build a daily prayer habit (even if you only have five minutes!), and why it’s so important for busy women to make space for spiritual rest.

If you enjoy this conversation, I hope you’ll do two things:

* Share it with a friend who could use a spiritual boost today.

* Consider picking up Amy’s book—it’s short, powerful, and deeply encouraging.

You can follow Amy at ajcattapan.com or find her on Instagram @ajcattapan.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Girlfriends. I'm Danielle Bean. I'm a wife and a mom and I'm on a mission to help you. Know your worth is a woman so you can find peace, balance, and joy and faithful living. This week we are talking with author Amy Catapan about Mother Cabrini. Can't wait to get started. Let's go.
0:19.6	Hey, girlfriend, how are you? Thank you so much for showing up here. I just, I love the magic
0:25.1	of podcasting. It's so fun to me. It's so fun to be able to connect with you, even if I never meet you.
0:30.5	I never know who you are. I love it when I get the chance to do that. But I love just knowing
0:34.3	you're out there and that we're connected through the podcast like this.
0:38.8	To me, it's just magic.
0:44.2	And also, I love that it gives me the opportunity through some of the guests that I'm able to have on to just see the beautiful work that God is doing in the church, all the different ways that
0:50.0	he's using different people with their different gifts and different opportunities to grow
0:55.7	other people's faith and to grow his kingdom here on earth. It's such a beautiful thing to witness.
1:02.9	But then I also just selfishly love the opportunity to have these conversations. And the podcast
1:09.4	is like a built-in excuse for me to be connecting with people
1:12.4	and be connecting with people that I've known through the years. And Amy Catapan, who's our guest
1:17.3	here today, is someone I've been connected with on and off through many years. And we've done
1:22.2	other conversations. We've done other interviews together in the past. And I've just loved
1:27.4	watching her work. She's a teacher. and she's just got a real heart for her faith and for the saints. She writes a lot about her calling to teach. And it's such a beautiful gift. But here today, she's going to be talking about Mother Cabrini. So St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, because her newest book is Hope Without Borders,
1:47.3	a spiritual retreat with St. Francis Xavier Cabrini. And we talk about the legacy of Mother Cabrini,
1:52.6	the first American citizen to be canonized, and what her courageous life teaches us about prayer,
1:58.9	about trust in God, about perseverance.
2:02.3	And whether or not you're familiar with Mother Cabrini, I promise you're going to walk away
2:05.5	from this conversation feeling encouraged and inspired. And if you're somebody who loves
2:10.3	deepening your spiritual life and connecting with the wisdom of the saints, especially through
2:15.3	media, through podcasts, maybe you can help somebody else do that, too.
	...

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