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Elizabeth Ann Seton was born in 1774 in New York City, two years before the United States of America became a country separate from England. Her parents were members of the Protestant denomination called Episcopalian, and members of high society.
When she was three years old, her mother died. Her father, Dr. Richard Bailey, did his best to raise Elizabeth. He influenced her greatly to be an avid reader, and Elizabeth developed a special love of religious and historical subjects. She especially loved reading the Bible.
In 1794, when she was 19-years, Elizabeth married William Seton and, with him, had five children. In the early years of her marriage, Elizabeth formed a close friendship with her sister-in-law, Rebecca. The two of them did so much mission work for the poor of the city, that people began calling them the “Protestant Sisters of Charity.”
Unfortunately, William’s firm went bankrupt around 1802, and he developed tuberculosis. On the advice of his physicians, he took his family to Italy for the benefits of a warmer climate. In 1803, though, he died, leaving Elizabeth to raise five children by herself. Fortunately, however, she had friends in Italy who supported her emotionally and financially.
While she was in Italy, Elizabeth fell in love with Catholic Christianity. The more she explored, the more she was convinced that this was the church that Jesus Christ had founded. She especially loved the Eucharist and other sacraments.
On Ash Wednesday of 1805, Elizabeth became a Catholic Christian and came back to the United States.
Unfortunately for her, being a Catholic Christian was a great stigma in New York in those days. And because her family and friends in the United States were very anti-Catholic, they ostracized her and her children. Furthermore, when she tried to establish a school for boys in the suburbs of New York City with a Catholic friend and his wife, the school was forced to close, because the people believed the school would simply be a front to recruit others to the Catholic faith. And when her sister-in-law Cecilia Seton expressed her desire to become a Catholic Christian, the New York legislature threatened to expel Elizabeth from the state of New York.
Elizabeth, despite these negative consequences, remained faithful to her new faith. In fact, she jumped into it with great fervor. While raising her five children, she opened a school for girls in Baltimore, Maryland on the feast of Corpus Christi, 1808.
In a village of Emmitsburg, Maryland, Elizabeth received a gift of a farm, which she turned into an institution to teach poor children. Other women joined her and, despite great poverty and harsh conditions, the institution flourished. This community grew into a religious order called the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. In 1813, Elizabeth, with 18 other women made their vows as Religious Sisters.
Mother Seton, as she was known in her community, died in Emmitsburg, Maryland on January 4,1821. Pope John Paul II canonized Elizabeth Ann Seton on September 14, 1975. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton has the honor of becoming the first canonized saint born in the United States. Her feast day is January 4.
