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Mother Seton is one of the keystones of the American Catholic Church. She
founded the first American religious community for women, the Sisters of
Charity. She opened the first American parish school and established the
first American Catholic orphanage. All this she did in the span of 46 years
while raising her five children.
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton is a true daughter of the American Revolution,
born August 28, 1774, just two years before the Declaration of Independence.
By birth and marriage, she was linked to the first families of New York and
enjoyed the fruits of high society. Reared a staunch Episcopalian by her
mother and stepmother, she learned the value of prayer, Scripture and a
nightly examination of conscience. Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, did not
have much use for churches but was a great humanitarian, teaching his
daughter to love and serve others.
The early deaths of her mother in 1777 and her baby sister in 1778 gave
Elizabeth a feel for eternity and the temporariness of the pilgrim life on
earth. Far from being brooding and sullen, she faced each new holocaust,
as she put it, with hopeful cheerfulness.
At 19, Elizabeth was the belle of New York and married a handsome, wealthy
businessman, William Magee Seton. They had five children before his business
failed and he died of tuberculosis. At 30, Elizabeth was widowed, penniless,
with five small children to support.
While in Italy with her dying husband, Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in
action through family friends. Three basic points led her to become a
Catholic: belief in the Real Presence, devotion to the Blessed Mother and
conviction that the Catholic Church led back to the apostles and to Christ.
Many of her family and friends rejected her when she became a Catholic in
March 1805.
To support her children, she opened a school in Baltimore. From the
beginning, her group followed the lines of a religious community, which was
officially founded in 1809.
The thousand or more letters of Mother Seton reveal the development of her
spiritual life from ordinary goodness to heroic sanctity. She suffered great
trials of sickness, misunderstanding, the death of loved ones (her husband
and two young daughters) and the heartache of a wayward son. She died
January 4, 1821, and became the first American-born citizen to be beatified
(1963) and then canonized (1975). She is buried in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
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