Today, January 4, is the memorial of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.
Foundress of the Sisters of Charity.
In 1774, Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born into a wealthy and influential Episcopalian family in New York. She was the daughter of surgeon Dr. Richard Bayley and Catherine Charlton. Elizabeth was raised in the New York high society of the late 18th century. Catherine died when Elizabeth was three years old. At age 19, Elizabeth married affluent businessman William Magee Seton, who was 25 at the time. She had five children with him.
Within 10 years, William’s ventures flopped. He soon died of tuberculosis, leaving his wife and kids in poverty. All this time, Elizabeth felt an attraction to the Catholic religion. She believed in the Real Presence in the Eucharist and in the lineage of the Church going back to Christ and the Apostles. In 1805, Elizabeth converted to Catholicism. The rest of her Episcopalian family disapproved of her decision.
Elizabeth ended up opening a school in Boston to make ends meet and educate her kids. The institution, though private and secular, was run like a religious community.
With the invitation and support of Sulpician bishop Louis William Valentine Dubourg, she established Saint Joseph’s Academy & Free School, a Catholic girl’s school in Baltimore, Maryland which initiated the parochial school system in America.
To realize her ministry of educating Catholic girls and taking care of the poor, Elizabeth founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s in 1809, the first native American religious community for women. In 1811, the congregation adopted the rules of the Daughters of Charity, founded by St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac.
In 1821, Mother Seton died at age 46 of natural causes.
Pope St. John XXIII beatified her in 1963. Pope St. Paul VI canonized her in 1975. She became the first citizen born in the United States to be canonized.