St. Elizabeth Seton

Window is RESERVED
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Stained Glass Window in the Newman Center

Biography 

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (28 August 1774 in New York City – 4 January 1821) was the first United States-born canon­ized Saint in the Roman Catholic Church. She was the foundress of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph’s, the first community of religious women founded in the United States. Her establishment of Saint Joseph’s Academy and Free School for girls paved the way for parochial school sys­tem in the United States later in the nineteenth century.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was born into a prominent Episcopa­lian family in New York City, August 28, 1774, the second of three daughters of Dr. Richard Bayley and Catherine Charlton Bayley. Catherine Bayley’s father was Dr. Rich­ard Charlton, rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Staten Island. Dr. Bayley was a physician and professor of medicine (anatomy) at King’s College (now known as Co­lumbia University).

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton came from a Protestant background, con­verted to Roman Catholicism, and was a co-worker with John Carroll in the formative years of the Catholic Church in the new nation of the United States. She was one of the most influential Catholic women in the early nineteenth century; her legacy and influence continues in the twenty-first century.

Elizabeth married William Magee Seton, scion of a wealthy New York mercantile family with international connec­tions, January 25, 1794, at the home of her sister, Mary Bayley Post. Five children were born between 1795 and 1802, Anna Maria, William, Richard, Catherine, and Rebecca. As a young society matron, Elizabeth enjoyed a full life of loving service to her family, care for the indi­gent poor, and religious development in her Episcopal faith, nurtured by the preaching and guidance of Rev. John Henry Hobart, an assistant at Trinity Church. She and her sister-in-law, Rebecca Mary Seton, became known as the “Protestant Sisters of Charity.”

As the eighteenth century drew to a close, a double tragedy visited Elizabeth. Political and economic turmoil took a severe toll on William Seton’s business and on his health. He became increasingly debilitated by the family afflic­tion, tuberculosis. Hoping to arrest the disease, Elizabeth, William, and Anna Maria embarked on a voyage to Italy. On their arrival in Leghorn (Livorno), they were placed in quarantine; soon after, December 27, 1803, William died. At age twenty-nine, Elizabeth had become a widow with five children.

For the first time Elizabeth experienced Roman Catholic piety in her social equals. She was deeply impressed, espe­cially by the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. She returned to New York in June 1804, full of faith turned to religious conflict when the Setons heard of her inclinations.

After almost a year of searching, she made her profession of faith as a Roman Catholic in March 1805, a choice which triggered three years of financial struggle and social dis­crimination. To support her children, she opened a school in New York City. The good reputation of the school re­sulted in an invitation of several priests of the Society of Saint Sulpice to open a school for girls next to Saint Mary’s Seminary. In June, 1808 she moved with her family to Bal­timore to open the school.

During her years in Emmitsburg, Elizabeth suffered the loss of two of her daughters to tuberculosis, Anna Maria in 1812 and Rebecca in 1816. By that time she herself was weak from the effects of the disease. She spent the last years of her life directing St. Joseph’s Academy and her growing community. She died of tuberculosis January 4, 1821, at the age of forty-six.

In 1880 James Cardinal Gibbons (then Archbishop), who succeeded Elizabeth’s nephew James Roosevelt Bayley as Archbishop of Baltimore, urged that steps be taken toward Mother Seton’s canonization. After official inquiries in the cause of Mother Seton were held in Baltimore for several years, the results were given to the postulator of the cause in Rome on June 7, 1911. She was beatified in 1963.

On September 14, 1975, Pope Paul VI canonized Elizabeth Seton, the first native-born saint of the United States.