Elizabeth Ann Seton

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton
Also known as
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton
Mother Seton
The first affirmative action saint

Memorial
· 4 January

Profile

Born into a wealthy and influential Episcopalian (Junior Varsity Catholic) family, the daughter of a big shot doctor; she was raised in the New York snooty high society of the time. After the death of her mother and baby sister She married a wealthy businessman William Seaton also an Episcopalian. Money goes to money…. She gave birth to five children.

The way these things go, her husband’s business failed and he caught himself a case of consumption, which eventually killed him. The way these people worked back then, she was now on her own, she had no family willing to support her. Elizabeth was forced to get up off the cushions and stop eating Bon Bons and get to working as she had no income after Bill’s death.

After much prayer and thought, Elizabeth felt drawn to the Catholic Church away from the upper crust Episcopal community she was raised in, So, on March 14, 1805 She walked into St Peter’s Church on 22 Barclay Street in New York, around the corner from the highfaluting Episcopal Church, St Paul’s, where George Washington prayed. She declared her intention to convert to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic faith. Once she converted to Catholicism, her strict Episcopalian family in a stunning show of upper class Protestant Christian understanding and support, once and for all, disowned her.

To support her family, and insure the proper education of her children, she opened a school in Boston. It was founded as a secular school, but it styled itself after Catholic education, chewing gum on the nose, standing in the corner, the whole nine yards. She approached various religious communities in an attempt to become a nun and run a religious school. No religious order had the facility to take in a woman and her five small children.

However, at the invitation of the archbishop, she established a Catholic girl’s school in Baltimore, Maryland. This basically founded the parochial school system in all of America. In order to staff and run the school system she started her own religious order, the Sisters of Charity. They’re the nuns who wear the bonnets.

Ann Seaton, as some of you know, is not my favorite of saints. Before the reform of canonization by John Paul II the church wanted a non-martyr to have proof of four miracles to reach sainthood. Elizabeth Seaton had only three…..The Pope (Paul VI) waved the last miracle….just waived it….because he wanted to make the American’s happy and have a native born American finally become a saint. There are other European Beati with 20-30 miracles to their name and this Ann Seaton, three lousy miracles. I understand two were card tricks…..Next thing you know they’ll want to make the Amazing Kreskin a saint…..Saint Amazing Kreskin they’ll probably call him. I was very upset by this for a long while, until I read about the travesty that is Saint Kateri Tekakwitha with her one and only miracle, I think Kateri cured a kid of acne …….but I digress. Actually Elizabeth Seaton’s miracles were much better than the lip fungus Kateri cured, through her intercession:

1) She Cured Sister Gertrude Korzendorfer, of cancer;

2) She cured Ann Theresa O'Neill, (b.1948), of Baltimore, from acute, lymphatic leukemia;

3) She Cured Carl Kalin, (1902-1976), of New York, from a rare form of encephalitis.

In all honesty, when I see this now, Saint Elizabeth did a lot of work for the poor and the under classes of society; the forgotten and the minority, the immigrant and the unwanted; in fact, Some of the earliest sustained social service institutions and health care facilities in New York City were started by Ann and the sisters. As such she has earned my true respect. Not that she needs my approval actually.

The hospital on Staten Island, formerly known as the “Marine Hospital,” then the US Public Health Hospital is now named after our Saint for today. My father went there for medical care back when it was free for Merchant marine folk…the attraction for my frugal dad was, “free.”

Born
· 28 August 1774 in New York City, New York, as Elizabeth Ann Bayley

Died
· 4 January 1821 in Maryland

Canonized
· 14 September 1975 by Pope Paul VI…with only three miracles

Patronage
· against in-law problems
· Apostleship of the Sea (two of her sons worked on the sea)
· death of children (her young sister)
· loss of parents
· opposition of Church authorities
· people ridiculed for their piety
· widows

Quotes (spurious):

“Wanna see something miraculous? Take a card…any card.”