Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Life story

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born on 28 August 1774 in New York into a well-placed Episcopalian family; her father was a well-known physician. In 1794 she married William Magee Seton, a merchant, and they had five children. Her husband's business declined, and he fell ill with tuberculosis.

In 1803 the family sailed to Italy hoping to cure him, but he died in Pisa. While being received by her husband's Italian friends she became acquainted with Catholic life. Back in New York she was formally received into the Catholic Church in 1805, and many of her relatives and friends then kept their distance.

In 1808 she went to Baltimore and opened a school for girls. In 1809 she moved to Emmitsburg in Maryland and formed a community of sisters, later the Sisters of Charity of St Joseph, usually counted as the first women's religious congregation founded in the United States. There she opened a school for poor children, often described as the starting point of the Catholic parish school system in that country.

She cared for her children while running the community until she died of tuberculosis on 4 January 1821. Paul VI canonised her on 14 September 1975, the first saint born in the United States. Her feast is kept on 4 January in the United States, the day of her death. She is buried at Emmitsburg, where a national shrine now honours her.

Works and witness

• Widowed in Italy in 1803, left to raise five children
• Became a Catholic in New York in 1805
• Opened a school for girls in Baltimore in 1808
• Formed a community of sisters at Emmitsburg in 1809
• Canonised by Paul VI on 14 September 1975

Patron of

Catholic schools

Saints from the same country

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Saint Katharine Drexel, Blessed Solanus Casey, Saint Théodore Guérin

References

• Martyrologium Romanum
• Dicastery for the Causes of Saints – biographical profile
• Joseph I. Dirvin, Mrs. Seton: Foundress of the American Sisters of Charity

Written by Anawim from documented history. Some details about ancient saints rest on tradition and are marked as such.