Today in the USA and Canada the Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, religious (1774-1821). Born in New York, Elizabeth Ann Bayley married William Seton and they had five children. After her husband's death from tuberculosis, she converted to Catholicism and founded the American Sisters of Charity, a community of teaching sisters which began Catholic schools throughout the United States, especially helping with the education of underprivileged children. Mother Seton laid the foundation of the American parochial school system and was the first native-born American to be canonized.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton—Day ElevenElizabeth Seton was born on August 28, 1774, of a wealthy and distinguished Episcopalian family. She was baptized in the Episcopal faith and was a faithful adherent of the Episcopal Church until her conversion to Catholicism.
She established her first Catholic school in Baltimore in 1808; in 1809, she established a religious community in Emmitsburg, Maryland. After seeing the expansion of her small community of teaching sisters to New York and as far as St. Louis, she died on January 4, 1821, and was declared a saint by Pope Paul VI on September 14, 1975. She is the first native-born American to be canonized a saint.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
This wife, mother and foundress of a religious congregation was born Elizabeth Ann Bayley on August 28, 1774 in New York City, the daughter of an eminent physician and professor at what is now Columbia University. Brought up as an Episcopalian, she received an excellent education, and from her early years she manifested an unusual concern for the poor.
In 1794 Elizabeth married William Seton, with whom she had five children. The loss of their fortune so affected William's health that in 1803 Elizabeth and William went to stay with Catholic friends at Livorno, Italy. William died six weeks after their arrival, and when Elizabeth returned to New York City some six months later, she was already a convinced Catholic. She met with stern opposition from her Episcopalian friends but was received into full communion with the Catholic Church on March 4, 1805.
Abandoned by her friends and relatives, Elizabeth was invited by the superior of the Sulpicians in Baltimore to found a school for girls in that city. The school prospered, and eventually the Sulpician superior, with the approval of Bishop Carroll, gave Elizabeth and her assistants a rule of life. They were also permitted to make religious profession and to wear a religious habit.
In 1809 Elizabeth moved her young community to Emmitsburg, Maryland, where she adopted as a rule of life an adaptation of the rule observed by the Sisters of Charity, founded by St. Vincent de Paul. Although she did not neglect the ministry to the poor, and especially to Negroes, she actually laid the foundation for what became the American parochial school system. She trained teachers and prepared textbooks for use in the schools; she also opened orphanages in Philadelphia and New York City.
She died at Emmitsburg on January 4, 1821, was beatified by Pope St. John XXIII in 1963, and was canonized by Pope St. Paul VI in 1975.
—Excerpted from Saints of the Roman Calendar by Enzo Lodi
Patronage: against the death of children; against in-law problems; against the loss of parents; Apostleship of the Sea; opposition of Church authorities; people ridiculed for their piety; Diocese of Shreveport, Louisiana; widows
Highlights and Things to Do:
The twelve apostles are Peter, Andrew, James (son of Zebedee), John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James (son of Alphaeus), Thaddeus, Simon (the Zealot), and Judas.
As you indicate, Judas took his own life (Matt. 27:1-5), and St. John, the son of Zebedee, was assigned by Jesus to take of his mother Mary (John 19:25-27), and a strong tradition holds that he later died of natural causes at an old age in Ephesus.
Scripture conveys that James (the Greater), the son of Zebedee, was martyred by King Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1-3), although the king himself was struck dead by an angel not long afterward (Acts 12:19-23). There is abundant testimony in the early Church that St. Peter, who was imprisoned on the occasion of James’s execution (Acts 12:3), was martyred around twenty years later in Rome, along with St. Paul.
St. James (the Lesser), son of Alphaeus, is often identified with St. James, “the brother,” i.e., relative, of Jesus, the bishop of Jerusalem noted in Acts 15, was who martyred by stoning in Jerusalem in the A.D. 60s, as Eusebius testifies (Church II, 23), and also Josephus, the noted Jewish historian of antiquity. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has stated, “Among experts, the question of the identity of these two figures with the same name, James son of Alphaeus and James ‘the brother of the Lord,’ is disputed.”
We also see that tradition holds that St. Thomas preached in India and suffered martyrdom there, as Pope St. John Paul II affirmed in his 1986 apostolic visit. In addition, tradition holds that St. Andrew was martyred via a form of crucifixion around A.D.60.
St. Bartholomew—also understood by many scholars as “Nathaniel”—is also believed to have been martyred, reportedly either by beheading or being flayed alive.
St. Philip may have been martyred in Hierapolis (located within modern-day Turkey), although that may be the tomb of St. Philip the deacon, noted in the Acts of the Apostles.
St. Matthew, The Roman Martyrology conveys, was martyred, although the manner of his death is disputed.
Finally, tradition also holds that St. Simon (the Zealot), the son of Clopas and who is also called Jude, was martyred, as was his apostolic companion, St. Jude (Thaddeus). They are both listed in the Roman Martyrology and the Roman canon (Eucharistic Prayer I).