Mid-to-late November is unusual for the large number of feast days that honor great Catholic women.

Earlier this week, on the 13th, the Church marked the ninetieth anniversary of the death of the first U.S. citizen to be canonized, Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), better known as Mother Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

Although she had originally asked to embark on a mission to China, she complied with the wishes of Pope Leo XIII to minister to Italian immigrants in the United States. When she and her sisters arrived in 1889, there were some 50,000 in New York City alone, living for the most part in poverty and apart from the Church.

The local archbishop, Michael Corrigan, was anything but welcoming. He insisted that the work she had undertaken was unsuitable for women and suggested that she and her community return to Italy. But she cited her letters from the pope and stayed.

Without support from the diocese, Mother Cabrini and her sisters educated children, visited the sick, and fed the hungry. As their reputation grew, local shopkeepers donated what they could in support of their ministry. Mother Cabrini eventually established an orphanage, a novitiate, and a house for her congregation.

She later established convents in Chicago, New Orleans and other U.S. cities, and during an epidemic in New York in 1892, she founded a hospital which she named after Christopher Columbus, to mark the 400th anniversary of his discovery of America. She eventually extended her missionary outreach to Central and South America.

Mother Cabrini became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1907, and spent time in Southern California (a shrine in her honor is in Burbank). She collapsed and died ten years later while wrapping Christmas presents for parochial school children. She was canonized in 1946.

Less well-known to North American Catholics are the other women saints who are commemorated in November.

On November 16, the Church honors Margaret of Scotland (1046-93), the patron saint of her country and its queen, who used her influence at court to promote the reform of the Church in Scotland, bringing various liturgical practices into conformity with those observed in Rome.

On the same day, the Church celebrates the feast day of Gertrude (1256-1302), also known as Gertrude the Great, a German Benedictine nun who is patroness of the West Indies. She was well ahead of her time in that her spirituality was rooted in the liturgy and Sacred Scripture and was focused on the humanity of Christ. Because of the latter, she is considered a pioneer in the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

On the 17th, the Church commemorates yet another queen, Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-31), the patron saint of Catholic charities because of her heroic work on behalf of the poor and the sick. She gave away so much, in fact, that she incurred the wrath of others at court.

She also established a hospital in the basement of the castle and regularly fed and nursed the patients. So personally involved was Elizabeth in this ministry that her own health was broken and she died at the extraordinarily young age of 24. Her reputation was such that she was canonized only four years later.

On the 18th, the Church marks the feast day of Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852), a French missionary and educator who was a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart (now the Society of the Sacred Heart). She founded various schools and orphanages in the United States and had a special ministry to the Potawatomi tribe in Kansas, where she was known as the "Woman Who Prays Always."

On the 19th, the Church commemorates three women saints: Mechthilde of Magdeburg (ca. 1207-82), a mystic and an abbess, whose writings are considered among the most forceful and poetic produced by women in the Middle Ages; Hilda of Whitby (614-80), abbess of Whitby's double monastery of men and women, where she established a library and encouraged the study of the Bible, Latin, and literature; and Agnes of Assisi (d. 1253), the younger sister of St. Clare of Assisi, who was the foundress of the Poor Clares and a close associate of St. Francis of Assisi.

On the 22nd, the Church celebrates the feast of Cecilia, a third-century martyr about whom little is known. She is the patron saint of musicians, singers and poets.

Finally, on November 28, the Church commemorates Catherine Labouré (1806-76), a Sister of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, whose alleged visions of the Blessed Mother gave rise to the devotion to the Miraculous Medal. Catherine was canonized in 1947.

Holiness, like language, is gender-inclusive.

Fr. Richard McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.