One of Our Own: Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Liz Lantigua recounts the ways Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton has been a holy friend to her since childhood.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is one of the most relatable saints Catholic women can identify with today!  

Her life was part of our American history. She walked our streets in both New York, Baltimore, and Emmitsburg, Maryland. She is one of our own!   

This year marks the 50th anniversary of her canonization as the first native-born American to be declared a saint. She was a loving wife. At one point in her life, she helped her husband with his company’s finances. This was at a time when most women didn’t even work outside the home. She experienced time of wealth, financial worry, and later poverty.  

Through Everything, She Kept the Faith

Her mother died when she was just a child, and later she had a strain relationship with her stepmother who was not very accepting. Her husband, William, died young and she became a single mom of five at a very difficult time for widows, especially, after being shunned by her relatives and friends for converting from Episcopalian to Catholic. This was at a time when there was great discrimination to Catholics in our country. She went through the grief of losing two grown children and through everything she kept her faith.  

 “Be children of the Church — children of the Church,” she repeated in her deathbed to the Sisters of her Order (Mother Seton: Wife, Mother, Educator, Foundress, Saint; now out of print). These words signify a lot even today. It reminds us that if we ever see things that could be better in the Church, we stay and work hard to fix it like Saint Francis of Assisi did when he received the message from God to rebuild His Church.  

Mother Seton's Legacy

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is considered the foundress not only of the Sisters of Charity but also of the first free Catholic schools in America. It was pure mission work! Elizabeth Ann Seton, later known as Mother Seton, was a convert whose discovery and love for the Real Presence of the Eucharist brought her to the Catholic faith.  

Although she died at the young age of 46, her legacy continues. From the tiny beginnings in Maryland, her Order grew into many religious communities, hospitals, colleges, child-caring centers, nurseries, homes for the aging, schools for children of special needs, and elementary and high schools throughout the country.  

They say a saint finds you and I’ve felt so chosen by her. I vividly remember watching on TV when Mother Seton was canonized on September 14, 1975 by Pope Paul VI. I was a little girl and my father, a Cuban exile, kept repeating to me “She is the first American born saint! She is American just like you!”  

A Holy Friendship Begins

Years passed, and as a newly married adult in my early twenties, I reconnected with her again. I was on a business trip with my husband when we asked the bellboy (who was actually an older man) for the address of the nearest Catholic church for Sunday Mass. He gave us the information. While we attended Mass, we noticed this man was also the usher and as he passed the basket he whispered to see him after Mass because he had a gift for me.   

It turns out he was a father of eight and as a bricklayer, he had built the church where we were attending Mass. He told me how Mother Seton had always helped him find work and provide for his family financially. He gave me a second-class relic and encouraged me to pray to her. That’s when my friendship with Mother Seton began. Her significant, miraculous, intercessions in my life are too many to list in this article. I was eventually given a first-class relic at the Seton Shrine that I treasure to this day.

One of my greatest blessings was when I prayed for her help to start a family after a year of trying, and miraculously I became pregnant with my first daughter; although she was due on December 25, she was born January 4th, Mother Seton’s feast day! 31 years and three daughters later I continue, as a mother, to ask for her intercession. 

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton was bold and courageous because prayer fueled her. A great inspiration to all women, she is especially important to highlight doing Women’s History Month. Just like the father of eight I once met, I invite you to walk in her footsteps and learn more about her by visiting the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where she is buried. They just opened a new museum exhibit at the Seton Shrine, titled "One of Us." As you learn more about her, she will become your dearest friend and mentor. She will comfort, intercede, and remind you that in all joys and struggles: “He is with me, and what can I fear? … I look neither behind nor before, only up” (Mother Seton: Wife, Mother, Educator, Foundress, Saint; now out of print).  

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Copyright 2025 Liz Lantigua
Images: Nheyob, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Jim.henderson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons