Our Patron Saint…
Elizabeth Ann Seton
The first native-born
American to be canonized by the Catholic church was Elizabeth Bayley Seton.
Elizabeth was born
to wealth and status in New York, on August 28, 1774, the child of
Episcopalians committed to philanthropy to the poor. Her mother, Catherine
Charlton, was the daughter of the rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal church on
Staten Island. Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, was a physician and
professor of anatomy at King's College (later to become Columbia
University). Elizabeth's mother died when she was only three years old, and
her father saw to her upbringing and education. She attended private school
in New York City and was encouraged to read from her father's large library.
As a child she was taught an ethic of service to the sick and those in
need, and led a quiet and bookish youth, reading widely and taking special
pleasure in the Bible.
Deeply in love at
age 20, she married William Magee Seton, a wealthy young shipping merchant,
and they became parents to five children, two sons and three daughters. Her
yearnings toward service led her to found the Society for the Relief of Poor
Widows with Small Children, which brought her the reputation as "the
Protestant Sister of Charity" -- and, tragically, foreshadowed her own
future.
William went
bankrupt after many of his company's ships had been sunk in war, and soon
was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He traveled to Italy with Elizabeth and
their eldest daughter, Anna, in hopes of finding a cure in the warmer
climate. Shortly after their arrival, in December of 1803, William Seton
died, leaving Elizabeth in dire straits. The "Protestant Sister of Charity"
now depended on the charity of family friends, the Filicchis, a Catholic
Italian family.
The consolation and
faith of the Filicchis intrigued Elizabeth and drew her to Catholicism.
Upon her return to America, she took instruction and became a Catholic on
March 14, 1805, over the strident protests -- and in some cases rejection --
of her family and friends.
Widowed, penniless,
and isolated, Elizabeth faced not only the rejection of family and friends,
but also of society overall. Her founding of a school in New York was
sabotaged when anti-Catholic sentiment led parents to withdraw their
children. She then opened a boarding house, where she supervised and cooked
and sewed for fourteen boys attending school in the city. Working night and
day, she eventually was invited to Baltimore by a priest there who had
learned of her struggles. There she opened a school for girls, which
flourished.
Over the next year,
Elizabeth attracted around her several Catholic women committed to service,
and in 1809, she took religious vows. Her community and school moved to
Emmitsburg, near Baltimore, taking the name Sisters of St. Joseph. From
then on, Elizabeth was known as Mother Seton.
Her community
adapted and then adopted the rule of the French Daughters of Charity of St.
Vincent de Paul and became known as the Daughters of Charity of St. Joseph.
By its third year, the community included twenty nuns, among them
Elizabeth's sisters-in-law, Harriet and Cecilia. The Order expanded to open
a home in Philadelphia in 1814, to staff an orphanage in Emmitsburg, and
open its own orphanage in New York City.
Mother Seton wrote
textbooks, translated books from French to English, and composed and
published hymns and spiritual discourses. She and the Daughter of Charity
of St. Joseph are considered the originators of the parochial school system
in America. By the time of her death, on January 4, 1821, the
twelve-year-old Order had swelled to twenty houses throughout the country.
Descendant communities now staff hospitals, child-care centers, elderly
homes and care facilities for the handicapped, as well as schools at every
level. Their presence has spread not only through North America, but also
South America, Italy and in mission countries.
When Pope Paul VI
declared her a saint on September 14, 1975, over one thousand nuns of her
Order were present.
