Faith in History / Sean Gallagher

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was first American-born saint

As we explore the lives of American saints during this year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, it’s fitting that we reflect on the life of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in the days following Independence Day.

Born on Aug. 28, 1774, in New York City, she is the first saint born in America. Seton grew up a member of the prominent Bayley family in New York and was a member of the Anglican Church there.

It is said that Seton, 15 at the time, danced in 1790 at a ball to celebrate the first inauguration of President George Washington. Four years later, she married wealthy merchant William Seton.

During the following years, God blessed them with five children. However, William’s business began to fail, and the family descended into poverty.

Still, Seton sought to help those in more difficult circumstances than her own, applying her Christian faith by caring for the sick and dying.

She would soon have to give this care to her husband who suffered from tuberculosis. At the recommendation of a physician, the couple sold their last possessions to travel with their oldest child to Italy, where they lived with the Felicchi family with whom William had done business.

The hoped-for recovery in Italy was not to be. William died there on Dec. 27, 1803. The Felicchi family provided solace to Seton in her grief, and she was impressed by their Catholic faith, especially their belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

When she returned to New York, she was received into the Catholic Church on March 14, 1805, a decision that was to estrange Seton from her Anglican family.

To support her children, Seton tried to start a school in New York. But it failed when her conversion to Catholicism became widely known.

She then moved to Baltimore where the Church was more firmly established. The school she began there met with more success. By 1809, she had moved to Emmitsburg, Md., and discerned that God was calling her to religious life.

Baltimore Bishop John Carroll, the country’s first bishop, received her vows and approved of her fledgling religious order, the Sisters of Charity, which is the first community of women religious begun in America.

Mother Seton, as she was then known, oversaw the early growth of the Sisters of Charity, who began the first Catholic schools in the country.

During her time in Emmitsburg, she continued to grow in faith and holiness under the direction of Father Simon Bruté, a French priest who taught at Mount St. Mary’s University there. In 1834, he would become the first bishop of the Diocese of Vincennes, Ind., which later became the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.

Mother Seton died in 1821 at the age of 46. The cause for her canonization was opened in 1940. St. John XXIII declared her blessed in 1963, and St. Paul VI declared her a saint on Sept. 14, 1975, a few months before America would celebrate its bicentennial.

“Elizabeth Ann Seton is a saint,” said Pope Paul in his homily at the canonization Mass. “St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is an American. All of us say this with special joy and with the intention of honoring the land and the nation from which she sprang forth as the first flower in the calendar of the saints.

“Elizabeth Ann Seton was wholly American! Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage.”

The Church celebrates the memorial of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton on Jan. 4.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us. †