Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in New York City on 28 August 1774, the second child of Richard Bayley and Catherine Charlton, both from wealthy Protestant families. Her father was a surgeon who served as health officer for the Port of New York, examining immigrants who landed on Staten Island, and he helped care for the sick during the city's yellow fever outbreaks. He later became the first professor of anatomy at Columbia College. Elizabeth was raised an Episcopalian.

Her early years were marked by loss. Her mother died in 1777, when Elizabeth was three, and her baby sister died the next year. Her father remarried, and her stepmother, Charlotte Amelia Barclay, often took Elizabeth along to bring food and other necessities to the poor in their homes. Elizabeth read widely, the Bible above all, and her father saw to her education.

On 24 August 1794 she married William Magee Seton in New York, and the couple had five children: Anna Maria, William, Richard, Catherine and Rebecca. William died on 27 December 1803, leaving her a widow with young children. In April 1804 she returned to New York from a stay in Italy, and on 4 March 1805 she became a Catholic.

In 1808 she opened a school for girls in Baltimore with Cecilia O'Conway. On 1 June 1809 she and her companions put on a religious habit as the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph, the first American congregation of women religious. The community moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland, where she established the first Catholic girls' school in the nation. She served as superior for nearly a decade, gave herself to the poor and the sick and to the parish schools, and is regarded as a founder of the American parochial school system. On 17 January 1812 the sisters were approved to follow the rule of the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul.

She died at Emmitsburg on 4 January 1821. The process for her beatification began in 1840. She was declared Venerable in 1959, beatified by Pope John XXIII on 17 March 1963, and canonized by Pope Paul VI on 14 September 1975, the first person born in what became the United States to be canonized. She is remembered as a mother, widow, teacher and foundress, and as a patron of Catholic schools.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us.