Mother Frances Cabrini was an Italian born nun whose advocacy of charity through her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which built schools, hospitals and orphanages all over the world and led to her being canonized as the “First American Saint.”

In “Cabrini,” she earns a stately, somewhat stodgy screen biography from the filmmakers who gave us the controversial human trafficking blockbuster “Sound of Freedom” last summer. So as you might expect, they’ve made a faith-based film with a conservative agenda.

But while “Freedom” has fallen into discredit because of all that the filmmakers didn’t know or chose to ignore about their dodgy “hero,” Mother Cabrini was vetted by the Catholic Church in the 1940s. Granted, that nature of their research might not wholly pass modern muster, and a many-decades-long -pedophile scandal has stripped the institution of the benefit of the doubt on such matters. Still, Cabrini’s story suggests a life of purpose, ambition and faith pretty much beyond reproach.

It’s a handsomely-mounted period piece with some impressive talent in the cast. And if it’s a bit vague about the passage of time, fictionalized incidents and the mission creeping “real estate” focus of her work, it tells her story with few embellishments.

Cristiana Dell’Anna of “Toscana” and “The King of Laughter” has the title role, a gaunt 19th century nun whom we meet as an adult with a tubercular cough and a determination to build “an empire of hope” out of orphanages, missions and hospitals the world over.

But in 1889, Mother Cabrini is finishing up an orphanage and school in Lombardy, just a pest to a pope (Giancarlo Giannini) whose lieutenants wish she would “stay in her place.”

Pope Leo XIII won’t grant her wish to become the first woman to head a Catholic mission abroad in China. But with Catholics struggling and children living on the streets in New York’s slums, she’s welcome to take over an orphanage there and do what she — still a “first woman to head a mission abroad” — can with it.

Cabrini and half a dozen sisters show up, disembark and hear their first ethnic slurs. With the help of a former street child turned prostitute (Romana Maggiora Vergano), they’ll learn the ropes and do battle with Five Points poverty, a cynical priest whose orphanage they’re taking over, the local archbishop (David Morse) and an anti-immigrant Mayor Gould (John Lithgow).

People on the street call and her sisters “dagos” and “guineas.” The mayor himself labels the entire 19th century Italian diaspora “brown-skinned filth.” Their Irish Catholic archbishop tries to prevent their fundraising. The police are used to oppress and harass their efforts and Italians goons and pimps menace their orphans and recruited help.

Mother Cabrini resorts to shaming “the greatest nation on Earth” for allowing the newest wave of immigrants to live worse than “rats.” And when mobsters threaten her, she’s not shy about playing the “wrath of God” card.

Dell’Anna is playing more of an icon than a fully-rounded human being. The character’s ambition is mentioned, her flintiness is depicted. But the sense of a flesh and bone person only truly comes through that cough that shows up every so often to remind us this woman was racing against her limited time on Earth.

Morse tones down the Irishness of his archbishop to the point where the character is blandly corrupt and reactionary. But Lithgow is in fine, imperious dudgeon here.

The production values outshine a somewhat meandering, strictly chronological screenplay by director Alejandro Monteverde and Rod Barr. They shortchange most supporting characters to brush through the high points of Cabrini’s New York work — an embattled orphange leveraged into a bigger facility on prime, upriver real estate, a hospital that racist “official” New York didn’t want built.

At times it calls attention to the fact that this is a fictionalized account of Cabrini’s life. There was never a racist, Italian-hating Mayor Gould of New York, although the city was home to a famous robber baron of that name. A New York Times reporter is invented (near as I can tell) to sing Mother Cabrini’s praises and champion her cause in print. And a difficult-to-recruit anti-Catholic Church opera singer meant to be Enrico Caruso has his name changed here.

But I was struck by this movie’s agenda, which has its contrasts with the soft-sold anti-abortion sale that Monteverde’s “Bella” made and the more rabidly ideological fearmongering of “Sound of Freedom.”

Mother Cabrini is breaks new ground for women in the Catholic Church. She’s a proto-feminist. The film is ardently pro-immigration, praising generations of Irish, Italians, Catholics and Jews whose “bones” are the foundation the United States is built on. Health care is treated as a human right, just as the right to migrate is.

All of that is filtered through a devout Catholic facing off with a Catholic Church that resists but seems willing to listen to reason in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Knowing the politics and track record of the filmmakes prompt one to question,”Why this movie?” and “Why now?” Perhaps they’re hoping that the soft-sell on-screen might deflect some of the rising outrage that a shrinking religious minority composing 23% of the population has, by hook and by crook, utterly taken over the United States Supreme Court, with six conservative Catholics (and one liberal Catholic) bending law, precedent and policies as they impose their dogma on the majority, especially targeting women’s rights.

The film itself is watchably unremarkable and surprisingly unemotional, given its meant-to-be-inspiring moments. Which suggests it will play for the faithful. But it probably won’t be an “International Woman’s Day” smash success when it comes to rewriting current Catholic Church history and recruiting new Catholics.

Rating: PG-13 for thematic material, some violence, language and smoking.

Cast: Cristiana Dell’Anna, Giancarlo Giannini, Romana Maggiora Vergano, David Morse and John Lithgow.

Credits: Directed by Alejandro Monteverde, scripted by Rod Barr and Alejandro Monteverde. An Angel Studios release.

Running time: 2:20