On July 3, 2020, President Trump signed Executive Order 13934 establishing the creation of a statuary park named the National Garden of American Heroes (National Garden).  Per the E.O. the National Garden will feature “a roll call of heroes who deserve honor, recognition, and lasting tribute because of the battles they won, the ideas they championed, the diseases they cured, the lives they saved, the heights they achieved, and the hope they passed down to all of us — that united as one American people trusting in God, there is no challenge that cannot be overcome and no dream that is beyond our reach.”  Among those who have been chosen to be in the National Garden are five Saints of the Catholic Church: St. Junípero Serra, St. John Neumann, St. Katharine Drexel, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and St. Kateri Tekakwitha, as well as three Catholics whose cause for canonization are ongoing: Venerable Fulton Sheen, Venerable Augustus Tolton, and Servant of God Dorothy Day. 

Notably absent from this list is Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the FIRST American "CITIZEN" Saint, canonized in July 1946.  St. Frances Cabrini was born on July 15, 1850, in the city of Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, south of Milan.  She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1880 and traveled to the United States as a missionary, at the request of Pope Leo XIII, to help Italian immigrants. From the beginning of her mission to New York in 1889 to her passing in Chicago in 1917, she founded hospitals, orphanages, and schools, throughout the United States, in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, Seattle and Los Angeles, helping the sick, the poor and the orphaned.  She lived her life with great faith, courage, perseverance, and fortitude in the face of many hardships and challenges, trusting at all times in God.  The courageous work of St. Frances Cabrini in the United States touched many people’s lives and left an example for all Americans to follow. 

Each individual to be in the National Garden was chosen “for embodying the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love,” and for having “contributed indispensably to America’s noble history.”  St. Frances Cabrini most certainly belongs among those to be honored in the National Garden for her contributions to our history as the First American "Citizen" Saint, a distinction that she alone holds.  Her life was a testimony to all virtues but most especially to faith, hope, love, humility, and perseverance.  Not only did she impact many lives and inspired countless numbers of souls during her lifetime, but countless generations after her death. 

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the First American Saint, should be included in the National Garden, as she embodies the characteristics of the American spirit, we all should emulate, and she uniquely contributed to our history with her pioneering and courageous work in the service of others, to the glory of God.