Meet Elizabeth Ann Seton: She Substantiated America’s Doctrine of Religious Liberty

The Basilica of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton serves as a testament and shrine to its namesake’s legacy of teaching, giving, and serving others. (Courtesy of Seton Shrine)

In November 1803, the Shepherdess, the ship carrying 29-year-old Elizabeth Ann Seton, her husband William, and their 8-year-old daughter Anna, the oldest of five, docked at Leghorn, Italy. Their desperate hope that this change of climate might cure Will’s tuberculosis immediately turned into a nightmare.

Their home and their port of departure, New York, was in the throes of a yellow fever epidemic, and the Shepherdess had arrived in port without medical clearance. Consequently, mother, father, and daughter were forced to spend over a month in a lazaretto, a cold, damp quarantine center that took its name from the biblical Lazarus. In the diary she’d begun on board ship, Elizabeth called this place their “prison.”

This search for a cure, which one friend had called “next to madness,” proved futile. On December 19th, the family was released from the lazaretto, and William died eight days later. Until June, Elizabeth and Anna remained in Italy as guests of her husband’s trading partners, the Filicchi brothers. It was then that Elizabeth, a devout Episcopalian who prayed frequently and had given herself to various social causes, became intrigued by Catholicism. Soon after her return home, against the advice and opposition of friends and family, she converted to that faith.

Starting Schools

Seton’s conversion marked a dramatic turning point in her life and in the history of the Catholic Church in America. Moreover, by joining the Church of Rome she would unwittingly strengthen the position of religious liberty in the new American republic.

A portrait of Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, 1797. Engraving on paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Public domain)

Faced with financial difficulties—her husband’s lucrative import industry had collapsed even before his death—Seton opened a school and boarding house for boys in New York. Several parents availed themselves of this opportunity, but once they learned that this formerly prominent Episcopalian had become Catholic, they withdrew their sons from the school.

Learning of her troubles, several priests in Maryland invited her to open a school in Baltimore, a city with deep Catholic roots. Seton accepted their offer, moved together with her children to that city, and founded a school for girls. Within the year, other women joined her in this work, and they soon organized themselves into a religious order. By 1809, they had moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland, where they founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph.

Seton was selected as their Mother Superior, with special provisions allowing her to continue raising her children. The women took vows of chastity, obedience, and service to the poor, and renewed those vows annually. Soon the order spread, first to Philadelphia and then to New York. Seton continued to head up St. Joseph’s Academy in Emmitsburg and died there at age 46 from tuberculosis, the same disease that had earlier claimed the lives of William and two of her daughters.

The order, now operating under the rules of the Daughters of Charity, continued to open centers of learning and serve the poor, and it gave birth to an abundance of parochial schools. Later, Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore said, “Elizabeth Seton did more for the Church in America than all of us bishops together.”

Built in the early 1800s, the historic St. Joseph’s House, called the White House, served as the first house for the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, in Emmitsburg, Md. (Courtesy of Seton Shrine)

Known throughout her life for her compassion and religious devotion, Seton was eventually canonized in 1975 by Pope Paul VI, the first person born in the United States to become a saint. Easily overlooked in this remarkable story is the impact of Elizabeth Seton on religious liberty.

Establishing Religious Tolerance

The Bill of Rights was ratified fewer than 20 years before Seton opened her school in Baltimore. The very first sentence of that inventory of natural rights provided that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Mistrust and disdain between Catholics and Protestants, prejudices brought to the New World from the Old, remained, but the rights of “free exercise” in religion had become embedded in higher law and culture.

A design for a stained-glass window of Seton, from between 1950 and 1990. J&R Lamb Studios. Library of Congress. (Public domain)

To flourish, however, written laws must be lived laws. The schools founded by Seton and her order, followed by the establishment of orphanages and hospitals, were open to all Americans. Anti-papist rhetoric and bigotry extended into the 20th century, but the guarantees of religious liberties allowed Seton’s order to operate legally and openly in society. Without intending to do so, Seton created living monuments celebrating America’s embrace of religious freedom.

In “American Saint: The Life of Elizabeth Seton,” Joan Barthel writes of the many roles Seton played during her lifetime: Protestant, Catholic, wealthy socialite, wife, impecunious widow, mother, teacher, nurse, and the founder of a religious order. These aspects of her life blended together to create a cultured, gentle, and generally good-humored woman who put her faith in God and who bore in mind the motto on the Seton family crest: “Hazard Zet Forward,” a combination of Norman French and Old English meaning, “No matter the risk, move forward.”

By moving forward and by her good works, Seton breathed life into the words of the Bill of Rights.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.