In 1975, the U.N.’s International Women’s Year, Pope Paul VI canonized Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton as the first American-born Saint of the Catholic Church. To mark the 50th anniversary of this extraordinary event, the Sisters of Charity of New York are pleased to share with you a new video: “Elizabeth, the New Yorker.”

Elizabeth was born in New York in 1774 on the brink of the American Revolution. Here she married, bore five children, worshipped as an Episcopalian, visited poor women and children, and saw her doctor-father treat desperate immigrant families. Elizabeth returned to New York after her husband’s death in Italy, and – in a city not hospitable to Catholics – she chose to become one of them. She spent almost 34 of her 46 ½ years in New York before moving to Maryland.

In 1809, Elizabeth Seton founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, the first women’s religious community begun in the United States, in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Eight years later she sent three Sisters back to her ”native city”- New York.

Here the Sisters of Charity have remained. With our lay colleagues and partners in ministry, we teach, heal bodies, minds and spirits, provide social services, serve those living in poverty, work for a just society, and care for God’s creation.

Transcription:

My name is Elizabeth.

As I turn the pages of my life and soon go into the Lord’s embrace, I take this time to reflect on everything that led me to this place.

I was born in 1774 in New York. My father, Richard Bayley, was a doctor. I loved him very much, but he was often away studying abroad or serving with the British Army during the American Revolution.

My mother I cannot remember, other than from stories my father would tell me about her. She died when I was only three years old. I always missed my mother. My stepmother didn’t make that feeling any better, as she didn’t show much affection or warmth toward my sister Mary and me.

We lived in several places in Manhattan. My father was very busy with his medical practice, his research into the cause of yellow fever, and his teaching at King’s College. Mary and I were often sent to live with my uncle’s family in New Rochelle. I missed my father a lot, but sometimes I would console myself with thoughts of God as my Father.

I was nineteen when I met and married the love of my life, William Magee Seton. We had five beautiful children: Anna Maria, William, Richard, Catherine, and Rebecca. They kept me very busy, but I loved being a mother.

In 1797, with two young babies of my own, I joined a women’s charitable society that helped poor widows and orphans. My sister-in-law, Rebecca, and I would visit them, help provide for their needs, and share in the pain of their poverty.

We lived on fashionable Wall Street, but when William’s father died, we moved to his home on Stone Street to care for his young children as well as my own. Will’s merchant business began to fail, and so did his health. We had to declare bankruptcy and move to a smaller home on State Street—our last home together, where our fifth child, Rebecca, was born. Even with all our sorrows, I will forever cherish the memories we made there.

As Will’s tuberculosis grew worse, we made the desperate choice to sail to Italy, where the climate was warmer and where he had business associates. But when we arrived, we were placed in quarantine for a month. Will’s health grew worse and worse. There was nothing I could do but try to comfort him and pray with him.

He died at thirty-six, and the Lord left me a widow at twenty-nine with five children. I thought losing my mother at an age I could not recollect was tragic. But losing my sweetheart at twenty-nine left me with an unfathomable pain.

The Lord did not abandon me. He sent Will’s friends, Antonio and Filippo Filicchi, and their families to help me during this time of anguish and to bring me back home to America. Their love, care, and kindness reminded me of God’s providence. They reminded me that I am not alone, that I have not been forgotten.

They truly lived their Catholic faith and shared it with me. I was especially drawn to their belief that Jesus was really present in the Eucharist. Oh, if I could only believe that.

I returned home with questions about what to believe. I didn’t expect the struggle to be so hard. As a widow, I needed my family’s help to support myself and my children. But many of them looked down on Catholics, who were mostly immigrants from a lower social class.

I knew that if I chose this path, many of them would reject me for my conversion. I felt abandoned, isolated, and misunderstood. This began a journey I never could have imagined.

What was I to do? Where was God leading me? For almost a year, I struggled. I searched. I suffered. And in those moments when I felt that way, I couldn’t help but reflect on the sentiments of Jesus Christ, who also felt the same.

Finally, after almost a year of struggle, in Lent 1805, I professed my faith as a Roman Catholic and received Communion. I thought to myself, “At last, God is mine and I am His.” A year later, I was confirmed by Bishop John Carroll at St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street.

Looking back, I see how my struggles drew me closer to God, whose providence opened doors when I least expected it. As I tried to find a way to live my faith and support my children, God sent Father Louis Dubourg, who invited me to Baltimore to start a small school. It was in Baltimore that my faith truly flourished.

Soon, other women came to join me, and I was asked to consider beginning a religious community. I felt such joy at the prospect of loving God by serving those in need. I loved teaching and helping the children. I couldn’t help but see myself in them, remembering the love I wished I had received from my mother as a child. I wanted the children to feel loved and cared for, and that’s what we did. I knew that tenderness was the language they best understood.

In 1809, we moved to Emmitsburg in the Maryland countryside. On July 31st, we began the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s. It was the first religious community of women founded in the United States. We followed the rule of St. Vincent de Paul, providing every service in our power to those in need.

We began with a free school for neighborhood children, and later opened a boarding school for girls. In August 1817, I sent three sisters back to my hometown of New York to care for orphans, to educate children, and to care for the sick—providing every service in our power.

The very city where I grew up, met the love of my life, had my children, and found my faith was now the place where my legacy would continue.

As I prepare to go soon to God, I hold a special place in my heart for New York, the city where I spent thirty-four of my forty-seven years on earth. I pray that what God has begun here with the Sisters of Charity—their service to all in need, young and old, those who live in poverty and those with resources to help—will continue to grow for many generations to come.

But for now, that is all. Until the Lord decides my last breath, I will keep receiving His grace and keep moving forward.

Over two hundred years later, Elizabeth’s legacy lives on through us and through our partners in ministry.