Exactly a year ago, Omnes published a brief profile of the first saint born in the United States, Elisabeth Ann Seton, which recounts the vicissitudes of the prosperous Charlton family, into which Elisabeth was born in 1774. She learned early on that property materials do not satisfy the heart.
This Episcopalian household suffered a hard blow in 1777: the mother died in childbirth, followed shortly after by the death of one of the youngest members of the family. The girl’s father remarried, but the marriage broke up. The father leaves for England and the stepmother refuses to welcome Elizabeth. With her sister, the girl went to live with her uncle, and during this time she kept a diary of her spiritual concerns.
At the age of nineteen, she married and had five children, but her husband went bankrupt and they decided to go to Italy, where he died. Widowed before the age of thirty and with five children, Elisabeth sought help from her husband and his wife’s partner, and became a Catholic. Returning to New York, she requested baptism and soon founded the community of Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph, for the education of poor girls, and became known as Mother Seton. She died in 1821.
The authorFrancisco Otamendi
Swiss
