AURORA | Just about all state agencies and counties — except for one — will celebrate Frances Xavier Cabrini Day on Monday, the result of a decades-long struggle to replace Columbus Day.
Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill in 2020 to recognize the humanitarian contributions of Cabrini on the first Monday of October, the month that Cabrini became a naturalized United States citizen in 1909, according to Colorado Public Radio reports.
Most state and county offices are closed for the day.
Cabrini was an Italian-American immigrant who arrived in Colorado in 1902. In 1946, she became the first American citizen to be made a saint by the Catholic Church. She founded the Mount Carmel convent and grade school, and opened 67 institutions throughout the Americas and in Europe. She also founded the Queen of Heaven Orphanage in Denver and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
Cabrini is now the first woman to be recognized with a paid state holiday in the United States.
Previously, the day was set aside to honor Christopher Columbus.
Lawmakers in Colorado’s General Assembly had offered six bills to repeal or replace Columbus Day as a state holiday since 2016, with four of them sponsored by former Adams County Rep. Adrienne Benavidez.
“Columbus is not the type of person we should venerate in this state because of the atrocities that he directly committed or committed under his watch,” Benavidez said at the time.
The American Indian Movement of Colorado has made efforts to remove Columbus Day since 1989, arguing the holiday celebrated the explorer as a hero while ignoring his role in the extermination of indigenous populations.
Coloradans for Cabrini Day co-leader, at the time, Steve O’Dorisio said it took 30 years of conflict to come up with a solution.
“We were able to find a compromise that people felt was good enough to get behind,” O’Dorisio said previously.
Except in Arapahoe County.
Monday in Arapahoe County is Arapahoe Day, not Cabrini Day, and certainly not Columbus Day.
In 2023, Arapahoe commissioners declared the first Monday in October Indigenous People’s Day and Arapahoe Day.
“As a County we pay tribute to our namesake, the Arapaho Tribe, who lived on these lands long before we became a county, and recognize and celebrate the unique heritage, cultures, languages, contributions, and resiliency and diversity of first nations,” Commissioners said in a 2023 joint statement. “We remember the Sand Creek Massacre where U.S. soldiers attacked and killed 230 peaceful Native people, including Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, in southeastern Colorado territory, and that for centuries, Indigenous Peoples were forcibly removed from ancestral lands, displaced, assimilated, and banned from worshiping or performing many sacred ceremonies.”
Like other Colorado counties, however, all county offices will be closed on Oct. 5. City offices are open, as well as both Cherry Creek and Aurora Public schools districts.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.