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Cuomo To Unveil Mother Cabrini Statue In Battery Park City On Columbus Day
By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 11, 2020
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Governor Cuomo's office
By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 11, 2020
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A statue commemorating Mother Cabrini, the first American to be canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic church, will be unveiled in Battery Park City on Columbus Day. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Monday's scheduled unveiling in a video address to the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which held its annual gala virtually on Saturday due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
"Mother Cabrini is the personification of the Italian American legacy," Cuomo said in the video. "She founded 67 schools, hospitals and orphanages. She served the poor and the immigrants. She had boundless energy and unlimited capacity and she was a model for female empowerment before the expression was ever used—doing all of this in the late 1800s and early 1900s."
The campaign to erect a statue in NYC for Maria Francesca Cabrini, who died in 1917 and was canonized in 1946, gained momentum in 2019 when First Lady Chirlane McCray spearheaded an initiative to address the lack of female historical statues in the city. The She Built NYC initiative conducted an online survey accepting nominations for future statues; although Cabrini received the most nominations, the city subsequently announced a plan to build monuments for Shirley Chisholm, Billie Holiday, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Dr. Helen Rodríguez Trías, and Katherine Walker.
Some Italian-Americans perceived the omission of Cabrini as a slight, and actor Chazz Palminteri went so far as to call McCray racist for leaving Cabrini, an Italian-born missionary, off the list. He later apologized to Mayor Bill de Blasio on the Brian Lehrer Show.
During the on-air exchange, de Blasio explained that the She Built NYC initiative was launched to create statues "to address a historic wrong"—150 statues in NYC honoring men, compared to five commemorating women. "That's not racist, so get it together," the mayor told Palminteri. "Let's be real here, you have someone you think should be honored as a tremendous figure, Mother Cabrini is going to be talked about in this next round. There's a great argument for her. I honor what she did for this city. But you don't call someone a racist who isn't a racist."
On the eve of Columbus Day in 2019, Cuomo got involved, announcing the formation of a State Commission to "work with the Columbus Citizens Foundation, the Diocese of Brooklyn and others to site and fund the new statue."
A year later, the statue is scheduled to be unveiled on Columbus Day on the Battery Park City promenade behind the Museum of Jewish Heritage, "looking directly at the Statue of Liberty," Cuomo said.
"Now, Italian Americans have two great statues in New York City—the Christopher Columbus statue and the Mother Cabrini statue," Cuomo concluded in his video message.
The monument to Christopher Columbus in Columbus Circle remains an object of scorn by those who argue that the explorer's history of enslaving indigenous people and other atrocities makes him unworthy of a statue.
Monday's traditional Columbus Day parade in NYC will be conducted virtually. And although Monday's forecast calls for rain, Cuomo said on Sunday he would be on hand for the Mother Cabrini statue unveiling in Battery Park City. Cuomo's office did not immediately respond to an inquiry on how much the statue cost state taxpayers.
As we previously noted, there is already a shrine to Mother Cabrini in Manhattan.
Tagged
battery park city
mother cabrini
columbus day
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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