Cabrini Marks Another Milestone Saturday

The end of an era is here.

Stephanie Van Leuven, principal of St Frances Cabrini School for the last 22 years, is retiring. A mass and blessing in her honor is scheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday.

“The completion of our second successful accreditation is a good time to pass the leadership of our awesome school to a new principal,” she wrote in a letter to parents.  “A new principal will find our school poised for continuing and building upon its excellence.”

St. Frances Cabrini has been credited with a lot of success and growth during its operation, particularly under Van Leuven’s leadership.

The foundation of the school was poured, metaphorically speaking, on Jan. 18, 1952 when the Archbishop of Seattle officially formed a parish in Lakewood, which was undergoing a boom like the rest of America in the post-war years. He dedicated that parish in memory of the first American saint, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini.

Cabrini, who lived from 1850-1917, was canonized as a saint after a life of forming orphanages, day-care centers, clinics and hospitals around the world. The Italian immigrant had sought to be a missionary, but her poor health lead to rejection after rejection. So she formed her own community, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The order established American roots in 1889, with its efforts to aid Italian immigrants who were seeking new lives in New York. The mission grew and lead to new orphanages, hospitals and schools for those in need from New York to Chicago to Denver to Seattle, where she became a naturalized citizen.

In less than 30 years, she had established 65 houses of the Missionary Sisters, crossed the ocean 30 times and visited eight countries. She died of malaria at age of 67.

The Lakewood church bearing her name held its first mass on Jan. 27, 1952, in the gym of Visitation Villa, a Catholic girls school that stood on what is now Lakewood Towne Center.

The Cabrini school opened to students on Sept. 21, 1953. There were 147 boys and 137 girls that first year. The first mass was held in the church the following year. The school reached its highest enrollment to date in 1969, when it educated 720 students, making it the largest such school in the Archdiocese of Seattle.

The Cabrini convent closed in 1986 as the school expanded. A daily journal, kept by the sisters all the years they staffed Cabrini school ended with this journal entry:  “Today marks the end of occupancy of St Frances Cabrini Convent by the Sisters of the Holy Names after 33 years. The convent building will be used for parish offices and meetings as of July 7. Sister Nancy Anderson, Sister Yvonne de Turenne, Sister Therese Martin, Sister Delores Shaw, and Sister Ellen Joan Duffy helped with the cleaning and sorting necessary for vacating the convent after so many years.”

A construction boom in the 1990s ended the decade with the dedication of a new church for St. Frances Cabrini Parish, which celebrated 50 years of operation in 2003.