Elizabeth Ann Bayley-Seton was born on August 28, 1774, in New York to a devout and wealthy Episcopalian family. In 1794, at the age of 19, Elizabeth married William Magee Seton, a prosperous banker and merchant. They had five children: Anna Maria, William, Richard Bayley, Catherine Charlton, and Rebecca Mary.  

In the fall of 1803, an ailing William brought his wife and daughter, Anna Maria, to Italy’s warmer climate to visit the Felicchi family, renowned merchants of Livorno. Discovered to have been suffering from yellow fever, William died on December 27 of the same year in Pisa, which left Elizabeth a widow at the age of 29. 

The Felicchi provided gracious hospitality to the widow and child until they returned to America the next spring. In Italy, 

on the other hand, Elizabeth was introduced to the Catholic religion by the Felicchi, which aroused her interest in the Sacred Liturgy. Although Elizabeth left the United States a firm Protestant, she returned to the United States with the heart of a Roman Catholic and was ostracized by family and friends. In her discernment, she sought the guidance of the first Bishop of Boston, Rev. John Cheverus, who reinforced her conversion to Roman Catholicism, and she took her religious vows in 1805.  

Rev. Louis William Dubourg, S.S., a Sulpician priest, met Elizabeth during a trip to New York in 1806. Impressed by her commitment to her faith, the Sulpicians invited her to join them in Maryland, where they established a sisterhood they named “Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph’s,” and she was later named “Mother Seton.”  

Elizabeth opened Saint Joseph’s Free School on February 22, 1810, to educate needy girls of the area. This was considered the first free Catholic school for girls staffed by sisters in the country. The Sisters of Charity later expanded to open orphanages in Philadelphia and New York. 

Elizabeth died of tuberculosis in Emmitsburg, Maryland, on January 4, 1821. By then, her congregation, the first founded in America, had begun serving orphanages, hospitals, child care institutions, homes for the aged, and schools for the handicapped.

The work of education and charity lives on in Elizabeth’s spiritual daughters around the world. Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore initiated her cause for canonization in 1882. Blessed John XXIII declared Elizabeth venerable on December 18, 1959, and also beatified her on March 17, 1963. Pope Paul VI canonized Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton on September 14 during the Holy Year of 1975 and the International Year of Women.