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Born
August 28,
1774,
New York City,
New
York
Died
January 4, 1821, Emmitsburg, Maryland
Canonized
September 14,
1975
by
Pope
Paul VI
Feast Day January
4, Foundress of the
Sisters of
Charity of Saint
Joseph's, the first community for
religious women to
be established in the United States. First United
States
native born
to be canonized.
Patronage
Widows, death of parents and children, children and
in-law problems.
“I'll be
wild Betsy to the last.”
Saint
Elizabeth Ann Seton in a letter written shortly before her death.
Origins
Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born on
August 28,
1774,
in New York City. She was the second daughter of Richard and
Catherine Bayley. Betty bridged an English colony to a new country. She
was one week old when the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia
to form independence and she became a charter citizen of the new nation
at the age of two.
Betty’s father was a nominal Episcopalian who exhibited no faith but in
later life practiced the corporal works of mercy to a heroic degree. He
ministered to the sick and investigated a cure for yellow fever, the
terror of New York.
He became New York City’s first Health Officer in a very unhealthy city.
He had a running battle with merchants and artisans to stop them from
their many unsanitary work habits that included throwing slops in the
streets that helped to create the conditions for yellow fever. Betty
loved her father very much, but he was frequently away from home. One
time he left for England to study surgery and was gone for two long
years. But, he learned his surgery and became the first doctor to
successfully amputate an arm at the shoulder. He was gone again when the
American Revolution broke out and again when the Patriots burned the
city as they escaped from its occupation by British General William Howe
in September of 1776. Mr. Bayley was a Loyalist (loyal to Great Britain)
and was stationed at Newport, Rhode Island, serving as a surgeon in the
British forces. His wife died on May 8, 1777. They had been married for
eight years and he had been gone for four.
Betty’s mother was the daughter of an Episcopalian minister and
probably planted the seeds of the faith in her daughter even though she
died when Betty was only three years old. Her father was left a widower
with three little girls. He soon remarried in June of 1778. Betty’s
stepmother taught her first prayers, but did not give her a mother’s
love. Her only memory of her step-mother’s religious teaching was that
she “learnt me the twenty-second Psalm: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, the
Lord ruleth me . . .Though I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I
will fear no evil, for thou art with me’; and all life through it has
been the favorite Psalm.” And it was, because it guided her calmly
through the Valleys of Death of her coming years on her pilgrimage to
heaven.
Betty missed her real mother and lamented this after the death of her
sister, as she later wrote. “I was sitting alone on a step of the door,
looking at the clouds, while my little sister Catherine, two years old
lay in her coffin; they asked me: Did I not cry when little Kitty was
dead: No, because Kitty is gone up to heaven. I wish I could go too,
with Mama.” She was only four years old. One evening at sunset, when she
was six, she carried her half-sister Emma to a window, pointed out the
setting sun to the baby and told her, “God lived up in heaven, and good
children would go up there.”
When she was eight, she and her sister Mary were sent from home to live
with their uncle in New Rochelle, New York for four long years. Betty’s
loneliness continued throughout her childhood but it made an opening for
God. She had a great heart that only God could really fill. Her father
and stepmother could not meet her needs for love. She loved greatly, but
little was returned to her. In her loneliness, she turned to
contemplation, “the long, long thoughts of youth,” and drew closer to
God who was always there for her. Nature led her to Him as she reflected
on “every little leaf and flower, or animal, insect, shades of clouds,
or waving trees” as she wrote years later, all of which were “objects of
vacant unconnected thoughts of God and heaven.”
When Betty was 12, she and her sister returned to her father’s home
filled with their half-siblings – six under the age of seven. Betty
became their second mother and sang hymns and read prayers to them. At
13, her father once again left for more studies in England and she and
her sister left to stay once again with their uncle in New Rochelle.
This time he was gone for a year and no one heard from him for the
entire time. She felt abandoned and her teenage emotions must have been
shattered. But, in her sorrow, God never let her down.
One day, while her father was gone, she sat down in a meadow on “a
sweet bed – the air still a clear blue vault above – the numberless
sounds of spring melody and joy – the sweet clovers and wild flowers I
had got by the way, and a heart as innocent as human heart could be,
filled even with enthusiastic love to God and admiration of His works .
. .”
“God was my Father, my all. I prayed, sang hymns, cried, laughed,
talking to myself of how far He could place me above all sorrow. Then I
laid still to enjoy the heavenly peace that came over my soul; and I am
sure, in the two hours so enjoyed, grew ten years in the spiritual life.
. . .” She continued to be led in her spiritual darkness by the light of
God.
At the age of 16, the darkness came closer with an
estrangement from her mother-in-law that led to Betty’s leaving home and
living with relatives for the next four years. Apparently, she was even
tempted to suicide but thankfully overcame it. She wrote, “the praise
and thanks of excessive joy not to have done the horrid deed . . .”
Ironically, she came closer to her father in her late teenage years and
they began a familiar correspondence and relationship that lasted until
his death.
Marriage
On January
25, 1794, Betty married William Seton. She was 19 and he was 25. He was
a wealthy socialite and a member of the firm of Seton, Maitland and
Company, one of the largest shipping businesses in New York. He was
handsome and she was pretty – a diminutive five foot, brown-haired, big
brown-eyed beauty. She was a pianist, fluent in French and an
accomplished horsewoman. Together they enjoyed the high society of New
York, attending balls, the theater and parties.
Their first home was on Wall Street near their neighbors, the Alexander
Hamiltons. They summered on Long Island and welcomed their first child,
daughter Anna, on May 3, 1795. William’s poor health was a constant
concern of Betty’s and to avert her sorrow she wrote that she became a
“looker-up” to God. She bore four more children – two sons and two more
daughters.
In the fall of 1797, Betty and other prominent New York ladies formed
the Widows’ Society, a charitable organization for the aid of widows and
orphans. She visited them and took them food and clothing that she
begged from door to door. The next spring, Will’s father died leaving
seven children at home from eight to eighteen. Will and Betty assumed
their care. She wrote, “for me, who so dearly loves quiet and a small
family, to become at once the mother of six children . . . is a very
great change.” Betty home-schooled the younger children. Rebecca Seton
was the oldest at 18 and she and Betty became life-long intimates. She
called her her “Souls’ Sister.”
Hard Times
In the fall of 1799, William’s business fortunes began to decline due to
raids at sea upon their ships from pirates and warships. The next
spring, Betty was pregnant with her fourth child and she had to make and
mend everyone’s clothing, do her usual household chores and write
business letters and keep her husband’s books until two in the morning.
She wrote that she had “pain in the back all day and in the side at
night, neither of which I have been one hour without for the last two
months. . . . I trust in heaven that the storm will go over, but,
really, at present it is hard times.”
Betty practiced a cafeteria-style spiritual life. She picked and chose
whatever spiritual beliefs and practices that intuitively appealed to
her. She wore a Catholic crucifix, admired the cloistered life, believed
in angels, appreciated Protestant hymns and Quaker silence, practiced
meditation and worshiped at the Episcopal church. In the spring of 1801,
she came under the influence of John Henry Hobart, an Episcopalian
minister who began to give her spiritual life some structure. A little
light was granted to her in the darkness of her hard times.
The Setons moved to the Battery at the extreme southwestern tip of
Manhattan Island in May. Their house had a view of New York Harbor and
the Quarantine Station where boatloads of immigrants were held. Many of
them were sick with yellow fever and other diseases contracted on their
long voyages in holds with poor food and without out fresh air or light.
Betty was moved to pity but could do nothing for them because of the
danger of infection. She wrote to Rebecca, “I cannot sleep. The dying
and the dead possess my mind. Babies perishing at the empty breast of
the expiring mother. . . . Father goes up early in the morning to
procure all possible comforts for the sufferers. . . .” And he continued
to do so daily, often from three in the morning until long after sunset
all summer long until he too collapsed from yellow fever.
Day and night Betty sat by his deathbed as he cried out, “My Christ
Jesus, have mercy on me.” In a sacrifice reminiscent of Abraham’s, Betty
took her baby Kit in her arms, went out onto the piazza, looked up to
heaven and offered her daughter’s life in exchange for her father’s
salvation. God did not accept Betty’s sacrifice, but probably granted
her prayer since her father died in peace holding her hand.
Betty accepted her hard times as she accepted all
of her sufferings – with trust in Divine Providence. She had suffered
her mother’s death as an infant, her father’s absences from home as a
child, her difficulties with her mother-in-law and separation from her
family as a teenager, the deaths of her father-in-law and father and the
sickness and business losses of her husband as an adult. Then, after all
of that, the next winter she and her husband fed her sister-in-law
Eliza’s household of six after her husband went to jail. The next
spring, a newly pregnant Betty wrote her remedy “of the blessing and
practicability [to her soul] of an entire surrender of itself and all
its faculties to God.”
The Voyage to Italy
Will was far into the final stages of tuberculosis in the summer of
1803. He and Betty decided to make a voyage with their eight-year-old
daughter Anna to Leghorn, Italy to visit his business friends, the
Filicchis, and find a warmer climate. There was little hope of recovery
but Betty wrote that she was to “go fearless, for you know where, and
how strong, is my trust.”
So with a heavy heart, she parceled out her children and her
sisters-in-law to relatives and left waving goodbye to them with Will on
October 2 to face the dangers of storms and pirates on their seven-week
voyage. She wrote to a friend, “Take my darlings often in your arms.”
They arrived in Leghorn Harbor on November 18 and learned that their
ship was the first to bring the news of the yellow fever in New York. So
Will and Betty and Anna were quarantined in the lazaretto, a stone tower
on the coast in which they were bolted into to a small, cold room with a
single window double-grated with iron, naked walls and a brick floor on
which they slept on the ship-mattresses. She wrote that “my eyes smart
so much with crying, wind and fatigue, that I must close them and lift
up my heart.”
And so it continued with Betty and Anna reading, praying, singing hymns,
jumping rope to keep warm and nursing Will who was crying, coughing
blood, shivering and in patient agony until December 19 when they were
released. He often said that this was the period of his life in which he
was most blessed. Betty wrote that if she thought that this was caused
by human providence rather than Divine Providence, “. . .you would find
me a lioness, willing to burn your lazaretto about your ears, if it was
possible, that I might carry off my poor prisoner to breathe the air of
heaven in some more seasonable place.” Will was carried off from the
lazaretto to lodgings in Pisa. There he resigned himself to death which
he eagerly awaited saying, “I want to be in heaven. Pray, pray for my
soul.” He died on December 27 at the age of 35 saying, “My dear wife -
and little ones” – “My Christ Jesus, have mercy and receive me.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh! what a day,” Betty wrote. “Close his eyes, lay him out,
ride a journey, be obliged to see a dozen people in my room till night –
and at night crowded with the whole sense of my situation.” Her
steadfast love and care for Will in his agony and death led her Pisa
neighbors to exclaim, “If she was not a heretic, she would be a saint.”
Catholic Influences
Betty was now a 29-year-old widow with five young children. She, who had
helped establish the Widows Society, was now one of them, away from her
children in a foreign land with only her daughter Anna.
Antonio Filicchi hosted them in his home.
He and his brother Filippo provided everything for them. Anna was so
moved that she said, “Oh, Mama, how many friends God has provided for us
in this strange land! For they are our friends before they know us.”
They visited Florence and Betty admired the
beautiful Catholic churches with their sacred art and music. She was
impressed by the worshipers kneeling at Mass and joined them herself in
prayer. When Antonio’s wife, Amabilia, told her at Mass that Jesus was
really and truly present on the altar, Betty placed her face in her
hands and cried. On another occasion, an English tourist mockingly told
her at the Consecration, “This is what they call their Real Presence.”
Betty was shocked and wrote, “My very heart trembled with shame and
sorrow for his unfeeling interruption of their sacred adoration; for all
around was dead silence, and many were prostrated. Involuntarily I bent
from him to the pavement, and thought secretly on the words of St. Paul,
with starting tears, “They discern not the Lord’s Body. . . .”
She was
on her way to becoming a Catholic.
Return to America
On February 18, 1804, the Filicchis wished Betty and Anna safe passage as they left for home to
America. However, before they even got out of the harbor, a severe storm
smashed their ship into another and they had to return to shore for
repairs. Then Anna came down with scarlet fever and they had to remain
until she recovered. Betty wrote, “The hand of God is all I must see. .
. but it pinches the soul.” Anna recovered within three weeks, only to
give the disease to her mother. The Filicchis works of mercy for them
moved Betty to write, “You would say it was Our Savior Himself they
received in His poor and sick strangers.”
Betty was coming closer to
belief in “Our Savior Himself” in the Blessed Sacrament. She wrote, “The
other day, in a moment of excessive distress, I fell on my knees without
thinking when the Blessed Sacrament passed by, and cried in an agony to
God to bless me, if He was there – that my whole soul desired only Him.”
The Filicchis’ teachings
and witness brought Betty closer to Mary, sacramentals and expiatory
penitential practices. Mrs. Filicchi's prayer book led her to write of
Mary, “that I felt really I had a Mother – which you know my foolish
heart so often lamented to have lost in early days.” Antonio taught her
the Sign of the Cross so that “deepest thoughts came with it of I know
not what earnest desire to be closely united with Him who died on it.”
And “the dear Mrs. F., who I am with, never eats, this season of Lent,
till after the clock strikes three. . . . And she says she offers her
weakness and pain of fasting for her sins, united with Our Savior’s
sufferings. I like that very much.”
Betty summed up her
lessons of the suffering she endured in Italy and wrote to God. “I must
always love to retrospect Thy wonderful dispensations: to be sent so
many thousands of miles on so hopeless an errand; to be constantly
supported and accompanied by Thy consoling mercy through scenes of trial
which nature alone must have sunk under; to be brought to the light of
Thy truth, notwithstanding every affection of my heart and power of my
will was opposed to it.”
Antonio decided to
accompany Betty and Anna on their return voyage as their chaperone and
attend to some business in the States. Finally, on April 8, Betty left
Italy for good leaving her deceased husband in its earth. It was
difficult and tempting for both her and Antonio to keep their love for
one another chaste on such a long voyage. But God preserved it. Holy men
and women are not immune from their natural attraction to one another.
Betty wrote in her Journal, “Most dear Antonio, a thousand times
endeared to me by the struggles of your soul, Our Lord is with us! . . .
. If the Lord had not helped me, it had not failed that my soul had
been put to silence. But when I said my foot had slipped, thy mercy, O
Lord, held me up.” Yes, her foot slipped, but she caught her balance and
didn’t fall down. She spent the rest of the voyage as Antonio’s
spiritual friend as he taught her the Catholic faith and they prayed and
fasted together.
Betty anguished about how
she should tell Reverend Hobart of her leaning towards conversion to the
Catholic Church. Before she befriended Antonio, he was her best
spiritual friend and advisor. She didn’t want to lose his friendship,
but was prepared to sacrifice it for the true faith. She wrote him from
the ship to prepare him for her announcement.
As I
approach to you, I tremble; and while the dashing of the waves and their
incessant motion picture to me the allotment which God has given me, the
tears fall fast thro’ my fingers at the insupportable thought of being
separated from you. . . .
Still, if
you will not be my brother, if your dear friendship and esteem must be
the price of my fidelity to what I believe to be the truth, I cannot
doubt the mercy of God who, by depriving me of my dearest tie on earth,
will certainly draw me nearer to Him – and this I feel confidently from
experience of the past and the truth of His promise, which can never
fail.
On June 4, they landed in New York.
Betty received the welcome reunion of her four other children and the
sad news that Rebecca, her sister-in -law and “Soul’s Sister” lay dying.
She went to her bedside for yet another death vigil. Rebecca died the
next month. Betty wrote in hope, “My husband, my sisters, my home, my
comforts – poverty and sorrow. Well, with God’s blessing, you, too,
shall be changed into dearest friends.”
So she tried to make friends of poverty
and sorrow, relying on the charity of friends and relatives for food and
lodging. Her announcement of her Catholic leanings strained her
relations with them. They were bigoted against those whom they called
“shiftless, shabby and scrubby Catholics.” All voices tried to dissuade
Betty and save her from what they thought were foolishness and disgrace
to the family. Reverend Hobart told her that he thought that she would
go to hell.
The Cataclysmic
Conversion
Betty was bewildered and in spiritual and
emotional anguish. She read and heard from Protestant and Catholic books
and apologists and the Devil himself who, she said, “has taken his place
so near my soul that nothing good can enter in it, without being mixed
with his suggestions.” She cried incessantly and lost so much weight
that she appeared skeletal. As a mother, she was concerned for the
salvation of her children. She begged the Blessed Mother “with the
tenderness and confidence of her child to pity us and guide us to the
true faith, if we are not in it, and if we are, to obtain peace for my
poor soul, that I may be a good mother to my poor darlings.”
One day she went to a
Protestant church and sat in a pew facing a Catholic church in the next
street. She found herself “twenty times speaking to the Blessed
Sacrament there, instead of looking at the naked altar where I
was.’’ Perhaps she was too attached to worldly security, friends,
relatives, social appearances and human respect to make the leap of
faith to Catholicism. Later, she honestly attributed her conversion to
“my hatred of opposition, troublesome inquiries, etc, [that] brought me
in the Church more than conviction.”
Filippo Filicchi had the
best advice for her. “Sincerity, confidence and perseverance in prayer;
calmness and tranquility of mind; courage and resolution in heart; a
perfect resignation to Providence – you cannot fail to succeed. Avoid
the labyrinth of controversies.”
She followed his advice
and in January 1805, “it finished calmly at last – abandoning all to God
– and a renewed confidence in the Blessed Virgin. . . .I WILL GO
PEACEABLY AND FIRMLY TO THE CATHOLC CHURCH; for if Faith is so important
to our salvation, I will seek it where true Faith first began, seek it
among those who received it from GOD HIMSELF. . . .”
She boldly wrote that God
Himself had to answer for her decision for herself and her little ones.
Come
then, my little ones, we will go to judgment together, and present Our
Lord His own words; and if He says, “You fools, I did not mean that,” we
will say, “Since You said You would be always even to the end of ages,
be with this church you built with Your Blood – if Your ever left it, it
is Your word which misled us. Therefore, please to pardon Your poor
fools for Your own word’s sake.
And so on March 14, 1805, Betty
“professed to believe what the Council of Trent believes and teaches.”
After her first Confession she exclaimed, “It is done! Easy enough: the
kindest, most respectable confessor is this Mr. O. with the compassion
and yet firmness in this work of mercy which I would have expected from
Our Lord Himself . . . . I felt as if my chains fell, as those of St.
Peter at the touch of the divine Messenger.” And then, after her First
Communion, “GOD IS MINE AND I AM HIS!”
Conversion Calamities
Betty stopped worshipping with the
establishment and the wealthy socialites at the Episcopalian church and
started at St. Peter’s Catholic Church. It was filled with poor
immigrants with poor manners who wore poor clothes. Betty’s
sister-in-law, Mary Post, distastefully called them “Dirty, filthy,
red-faced – the church a horrid place of spits and pushing.” Indeed,
Betty admitted that she “found it all that indeed.” But she came to
honor God in the true faith, not the congregation.
The conversion calamities began with
estrangement from her relatives and friends. The hardest break for her
was from her only Protestant spiritual advisor, Reverend Hobart. She
reported that her last painful conversation with him “was repaid fully
and a thousand times on Sunday morning by my dear master at Communion,
and my Faith, if possible, more strengthened and decided than if it had
not been attacked.” It was so strengthened that “happen now what will, I
rest with God. The tabernacle and Communion! So now I can pass the
Valley of Death itself.”
She tried to support herself and
started a private school but the rumors flew that she was going to try
to convert the Protestant children. The school failed for lack of
students and Betty was humbly forced to move in with her sister and
brother-in-law.
Family relations were further strained
when her teenage Seton sisters-in-law, Cecilia and Harriet, whom Betty
had raised as daughters, and their cousin became interested in
Catholicism. Betty wrote Cecilia a beautiful teaching on prayer.
We must pray literally without ceasing – without
ceasing; in every occurrence ad employment of our lives. You know I mean
that prayer of the heart which is independent of place or situation, or
which is, rather, a habit of lifting up the heart to God, as in a
constant communication wit Him.
As, for
instance, when you go to your studies, you look up to Him with sweet
complacency, and think: O Lord! How worthless is this knowledge, if it
were not for the enlightening my mind and improving it to Thy service;
for being more useful to my fellow-creatures, and enabled to fill the
part Thy Providence may appoint me.
The family strain was
somewhat eased by Betty’s attendance at the death beds of her
half-sister Emma Craig and her estranged step-mother both of whom died
in the summer of 1805.
That fall, she was able to return to
her home and take in Protestant students “to board, wash and mend for.”
But in the summer of 1806, the Seton family once again rose up against
Betty on account of 16-year-old Cecilia Seton’s conversion to
Catholicism. They blamed Betty, but Cecilia was a mature young lady with
a mind of her own. Her family threatened to ship her out to the West
Indies and to banish Betty from New York. They locked Cecilia her in her
room for several days to consider these consequences.
Cecilia then courageously
walked out of Charlotte’s home for Betty’s and left a note. “In
consequence of a firm resolution to adhere to the Catholic Faith, I left
your house this morning . . .” Three days later, she made her act of
faith in the Catholic Church. Her family ostracized her and her wealthy
relatives disinherited Betty. Her former friends warned everyone not to
support her and to shun her. Anti-Catholic feelings rode so high that on
Christmas Eve a crowd gathered outside of St. Peter’s to heckle the
worshipers, who may have included Betty and Cecilia. They were
dispersed, but the next day the Catholics formed a cordon to defend the
church and a riot broke out in which one man was killed and several
others wounded.
Betty worried about bringing her
children up in such a Protestant environment and worried further about
their salvation if she were to die. She dreamed of a convent life in
Montreal where she might teach her children or to go to “some corner of
the earth and devote our whole time to God!” She was alarmed because of
“the ridicule they are forced to hear of our holy religion and the
mockery of the Church and ministers.”
God provided some of the
best of these ministers to Betty as together they began to form the
Catholic Church in the United States. She was advised by the best of the
early Catholic clergy: Archbishop John Carroll, Father William Dubourg,
president of St. Mary’s College, Fathers John Dubois and Simon Brute,
all of Maryland and Fathers Cheverus and Matignon of Boston. Fathers
Dubourg, Dubois, Brute and Cheverus all later became Bishops. Father
Matignon prophetically wrote her, “You are destined, I think, for some
great good in the United States and here [Baltimore] you should remain
in preference to any other location.”
Once again Betty was
called on to give a final witness to her relatives of her works of mercy
at deathbeds. Her half-sister Eliza Maitland called for her from her
deathbed. Both Betty and Cecilia ministered to her needs, night and day
in turns. Finally, Betty “closed her dying eyes.” Then Betty began to
close her own eyes on New York and look towards Baltimore for her
family’s future. She fixed her eyes upon it when her boarding
establishment finally failed for lack of boarders in the spring of 1808.
Father Dubourg providentially offered to give her a plot of land near
St. Mary’s, enroll six girls with her and take her sons in the College.
She accepted and was on her way by ship to Baltimore within three weeks
with her daughters. She “saw once more the windows of State Street,
passed the Quarantine, and so near the shore as to see every part of it.
Oh, my Lord – in that hour! Can a heart swell so high and not burst? ”
The
Exodus to Maryland
They sailed for seven days over
rough waters “with both little dear ones in my narrow berth, the hand
held over to Ann who sleeps beneath me – praying every ten minutes. . .
.” The sea-sick children hung their heads down low but “Mother’s heart,
in firm and steadfast confidence, [looked] straight upwards.” What did
she expect when she landed? Was she anxious or worried? “No. Can I be
disappointed? No. . . .Doubt and fear fly from the breast inhabited by
Him. There can be no disappointment where the soul’s only desire and
expectation is to meet His Adored Will and fulfill it.”
She met that Will that
awaited her on June 15, 1808 and left for St. Mary’s Chapel the next day
to attend the Mass of its consecration. As she and her children entered,
they were greeted by organ and choir music and the Kyrie. She
described it in a letter to Cecilia, who had remained in New York to
care for her relative’s children. “Your imagination can never conceive
the splendor, the glory of the scene – all I have told you of Florence
is a shadow.” She had now experienced Catholicism in the United States
and received a warm welcome.
The family moved into a modest home on Paca Street in Baltimore. Betty had enough money from her frugal savings
from the gifts that had been made to her by her friends. Her sons were
now 12 and 10 and lived across the street at St. Mary’s where they went
to school. Thirteen-year-old Anna and her two younger sisters lived with
Betty. She started a little school with seven pupils consisting of her
three girls and four other boarders. She followed a busy schedule of
prayer and schooling that began at 5:30 am and continued until 6:30 pm.
She wrote that “from half-past five in the morning until nine at night
every moment is full-no space even to be troubled.” She dreamed of
starting a larger Catholic school for girls and perhaps a religious
order. This would be very unusual in view of her young children.
On December 7, 1808, Cecilia O’Conway
arrived at Paca Street with her father who announced that he came “to
offer her to God.” She would help Betty until her dream could be
realized. Father Dubourg had a similar dream but they both faced the
great obstacle of a lack of funds. They both prayed that the obstacle
would be removed and the funds forthcoming.
Soon afterwards, Jesus
spoke to Betty in a locution after Communion, “Go, address yourself to
Mr. Cooper; he will give you what is necessary to commence the
establishment.” She told this to Father Dubourg who knew Samuel Cooper,
a wealthy man who had left the world to study for the priesthood. He
advised Betty to say nothing and let God work it out, if it was His
will. She obeyed and on the evening of the very same day, Mr. Cooper
visited Father Dubourg and lamented that nothing was being done for the
education of girls. Father agreed and said he felt the same way but
there were no funds. “Oh well, “ said Mr.Cooper, “I have ten thousand
dollars which I can give you for this purpose.” He later gave the money
and made this prophecy, “Sir, this establishment will be made at
Emmitsburg, a village eighteen leagues [about 50 miles] from Baltimore;
and then it will extend throughout the United States.”
On the Feast of the
Annunciation, March 25, 1809, Elizabeth Seton made her vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience in the presence of Archbishop Carroll. Now she
became known as Mother Seton. By June, four more girls came to join
Mother, including her sister-in-law Cecilia, “uniting under her banner,
which is the Cross of Christ.” On June 2, again the Feast of Corpus
Christi in St. Mary’s Chapel, one year after Mother’s arrival in
Baltimore, the five Sisters dressed in their religious habits, similar
to Italian widows’ clothing, and attended Mass for the first time as a
religious society.
The Emmitsburg
Community
On June 21, Mother led her
daughter Anna, Cecilia and Harriet, her two sisters-in-law, and another
on their journey to Emmitsburg. It took them four days of walking more
than half way next to their Conestoga wagon over the fields and hills on
the rough roads. Mother jokingly wrote, “The dogs and pigs came out to
meet us, and the geese stretched their necks in mute demand to know if
we were any of their sort, to which we gave assent.”
Finally they passed
through the valley overlooked by St. Mary’s Mountain and arrived at the
crossroads village of Emmitsburg. Several hundred. people lived there
and about half of them worshiped at St. Josephs’ Church built in 1793.
Father John Dubois, its pastor, moved out of his house on St. Mary’s
Mountain so that the pioneers could stay there until their so-called
Stone House was ready at the Fleming farm that Mr. Cooper had purchased
for them. Soon Mothers’ daughters Cathreine and Rebecca arrived and they
all settled in for the next month. Mother said, “We are half in the sky,
the height of our situation is almost incredible.”
In July, Harriet converted to
Catholicism with the exclamation to Mother, “It is done, my sister, I am
a Catholic. The cross of Our Dearest is the desire of my soul. I will
never rest till He is mine.” Then five more ladies joined them,
including another widow with a boy, Mothers two sons and two other
students. They all moved to the Stone House and began to lead the
religious life by July 31 as the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. This
was the first native American Sisterhood and the first free Catholic
parochial school in the United States.
Harriet’s conversion had the same
effect on the Seton family as had Elizabeth’s and Cecilia’s. They
reviled her by mail including a letter from Gouverneur Ogden, an
important member of the New York Legislature. He wrote what proved to be
a great false prophecy, “that the establishments at Baltimore and St.
Joseph’s are novel things in the United States, and would not have been
permitted by the populace in any other place than in the democratic,
Frenchified State of Maryland. The religion they profess is uncongenial
to the habits, manners and nature of Americans; and ere long I predict
from many causes the demolition of every building in that state in any
wise resembling a convent or Catholic hospital.”
Harriet selected the
community’s cemetery while walking the grounds. She came to a little
grove of woods while eating an apple, threw the core against a tree,
pointed to the ground where it landed and said that would be the place
of her grave. She died after suffering for a month on December 22 and
was buried there. She was the first death in the community. Harriet had
been more like a child than a sister-in-law to Elizabeth since she had
cared for her since the age of 10.
Soon more arrivals brought
the group to 20 crowding up the Stone House. The House had only four
rooms, two on the ground floor and two in the garret where the snow
later blew in on the sisters who slept on mattresses on the floor. They
rose at five am for morning prayers and Mass followed by breakfast and
chores until 11:45 when they had an examination of conscience, visit to
the Blessed Sacrament and lunch with Scripture readings. Recreation
followed until 2 pm when they made another visit to the Blessed
Sacrament, chores until five, Rosary and dinner after which recreation
until 8:30 then night prayers and bed. The chores were manual labor to
which many of the ladies were not accustomed but they adapted to them in
the spirit of poverty. The chores consisted of cleaning, sewing,
washing clothes in Tom’s Creek and carrying them a few hundred yards to
and from the House and cultivating the garden.
Fr. Dubourg, their
spiritual director and Superior, suggested that they grow carrots to
provide “carrot coffee” for themselves. This poverty coffee became their
customary daily drink. Mother expressed her attitude towards poverty,
“If you knew half the real good your friend possess, while the world
thinks she is deprived of everything worth having, you would . . allow
that she has truly and really the best of it.”
Mother’s duties consisted of
supervising and administering the convent and school and walking “about
with my knitting in my hands (we supply or are to supply, by knitting
and spinning, the college and two seminaries of Mr. Dubourg with stocks
and cloth), give my opinion, see that everyone is in their place, write
letters, read and give good advice.”
Spiritual Clashes
In early August, Mother
received a disturbing letter from Fr. Dubourg instructing the Sisters to
disassociate themselves from their confessor, Father Pierre Babade.
Apparently Fr. Dubourg thought that he had too great an influence on
them. Perhaps he may even have been a little jealous. His ruling upset
the Sisters very much because they valued his spiritual advice that had
instilled in them a spirit of enthusiasm in their pioneer venture.
Mother didn’t take this sitting down.
In defense of her
Sisters, she wrote to Archbishop Carroll explaining, “I should have
acquiesced quietly, tho’ my heart was torn to pieces. But the others
could not bear it in the same way.” Fr. Dubourg then resigned as
Superior in an apparent pique of sensitivity. Mother was deeply saddened
and wrote him, “The Mother is worthless. Pity them, pity her; try her
once more and if she ever even vexes you again, quit her and them
forever.” Unfortunately, Fr. Dubourg did not “try her once more” and he
was succeeded by Fr. John David, a controlling person with whom Mother
clashed from the very beginning.
Fr. David wanted to do and control
everything his way, alone and without consulting the Sisters. He had
great plans and schemes for how the new community of Sisters and their
school should be run - Mother would be transferred to Baltimore and be
replaced as Mother Superior then again, Mother would remain at
Emmitsburg as school superintendent but be replaced as Mother Superior.
Rumors of his plans were unsettling to the Sisters. They didn’t know
what was going on. Mother found herself unable to cooperate with Fr.
David or to inform him of anything. She froze and wrote Archbishop
Carroll, “I remain motionless and inactive .It is for you, my most
revered Father, to decide if this is temptation, or what it is.” He
didn’t answer her question but advised her to sacrifice “yourself,
notwithstanding all the uneasiness and disgust you may experience and
continue in your place of Superior.” So Mother remained in obedience and
disgust under the direction of Fr. David for another year and a half.
St. Joseph’s House
The Sisters soon outgrew
the Stone House and moved into the new St. Joseph’s House or White House
a couple of hundred yards away on February 20, 1810. Father Dubois led
the procession from the Stone House with the Blessed Sacrament to St.
Joseph’s. It served as a combination convent and school and consisted of
a schoolroom and 30 simple cells for the Sisters each with a bed, chair
and table. Two days later, three parish children were admitted
to the school. This was the first parish school in the United States.
They suffered from a
plague of fleas that infested the construction materials and the
Sisters’ mattresses. They had to move from room to room to escape them.
One escape that all looked forward to was the Sunday excursion to Mount
St. Mary’s for Mass. It was about a mile away over fields and streams
without bridges or roads. Twenty Sisters and children waded over
streams, climbed fences carrying their dinners in a sack. They ate on
the mountain overlooking the valley near a stream at the base of a small
grotto-like cliff and read the Divine Office.
In early spring, Cecilia’s health began
to fail and Mother prepared herself to accept her death which she
expected within a few weeks. She wrote a friend and reminisced about her
willingness to sacrifice a very happy life.
I remember when Anna was six months old and everything smiled around
me-venerating the virtues of my Seton and sincerely attached to him,
accustomed to the daily visits and devoted love of my father, and
possessed of all I estimate as essential to happiness-alone with this
babe in the see-saw of motherly love, frequently the tears used to start
and often overflow; and I would say to myself while retrospecting the
favors of heaven: “All these, these and heaven, too?”
Sometimes falling on my knees with the sleeping suckling in my arms, I
would offer her and all my dear possessions-husband, father, home-and
entreat the Bountiful Giver to separate me from all, if indeed I could
not possess my portion here-and with Him, too.
Nor do I remember any part of my life, after being settled in it, that I
have not constantly been in the same sentiment, always looking beyond
the bounds of time and desiring to quit the gift for the Giver.
God had accepted her sacrifice - the
lives of her husband, father, and the loss of her home and possessions.
She couldn’t have “all these, these and heaven, too.” Now it was time to
“quit the gift [of Cecilia] for the Giver.” Mother continued in her
letter. “We part, nature groans; for me it is an anguish that threatens
dissolution-not in convulsive sighs, but the soul is aghast, petrified.
After ten minutes it returns to its usual motion, and all goes on as if
nothing had happened. This same effect has followed the death of all so
dear. Why? Faith lifts the staggering soul on one side, Hope supports it
on the other. Experience says it must be, and love says-let it be.”
Cecilia died on April 29. She was the first professed Sister to be
buried in the Sisters’ cemetery. Mother said, “I have seen more real
affliction and sorrow here in the ten months since our removal than in
all the thirty-five years of my past life, which was all marked by
affliction.”
In all of
this time, she had not forgotten that her primary duty was to her
children. Mother was in the very unusual and unprecedented position of
being a natural mother in a family with minor children while at the same
time being a Mother Superior of a religious community. She wrote, “. .
.the dear ones have their first claim, which must ever remain inviolate.
Consequently, if at any time the duties I am engaged in should interfere
with those I owe to them, I have solemnly engaged with our good Bishop
Carroll, as well as my own conscience, to give the darlings their right,
and to prefer their advantage in everything.”
She was even prepared to leave her
community and beloved Valley for their sake or if Father David succeeded
in his plan to remove her. She wrote, “Everything here is again
suspended and I am casting about to prepare for beginning the world
again with my poor Annina, Josephine [Catherine] and Rebecca; as . .
.our situation is more unsettled than ever.” But she turned as always s
to Divine Providence and looked towards eternity. “His Adorable Will be
done during the few remaining days of my tiresome journey which, being
made with so many tears and sown so thick with crosses, will certainly
be concluded with joy and crowned with eternal rest. . . .Look up! . .
.We are in the true and sure way of salvation for that long, long
eternity before us; if only we keep courage we will go to heaven on
horseback instead of idling and creeping along.”
Mother had remained
obedient to Fr. David for a year and a half but she firmly resisted his
schemes. Thankfully for the life of the community, she wrote that she
did not have a “pliancy of character I would for some reasons wish to
possess, and may eventually be the fruit of divine grace, but as yet is
far from being attained.”
None of Fr. David’s
schemes were approved by Archbishop Carroll. He had allowed Mother to
remain as Mother Superior. On May 12, 1811, Fr. David was transferred
to Bardstown, Kentucky. Fr. Dubois replaced him as Superior and he
remained as such for the rest of Mother’s life.
The Sisters’ Institute
adapted the rule of St. Vincent de Paul’s French Daughters of Charity to
their own particular situation in their apostolate of education of young
girls and works of mercy for the poor and sick. They also took in paying
boarders to help to support their needs. Archbishop Carroll approved the
permanent rules and constitutions of Mother Seton’s Sisters of Charity
on September 11, 1811. He hoped that this would bring peace to Mother,
“It will be like freeing you from a state in which it was difficult to
walk straight, as you had not certain way in which to proceed.” There
would be no more Father David’s because the Archbishop ruled that the
Superior himself was not to be a ruler but an advisor to the Mother
Superior who would be the ruler of the community under the Archbishop.
“The
Old Knot of Oak”
Mother’s husband used to
call her “the old knot of oak.” But the old knot was becoming severely
tried through the sicknesses of her son William, daughter Anna and
herself. William's illness was life threatening and both Anna and Mother
contracted the dreaded “family enemy” of tuberculosis. On January 31,
1812, Anna became the first Sister to enter the community since the
adoption of its rules and constitutions on January 17. Mother was the
Mother Superior of the community and was permitted to simultaneously
retain the care and control of her children as she began her deathwatch
for Anna. The 16-year-old girl’s lungs were devoured and her whole body
was in pain. She offered it all to God and heroically said, “Let me pay
my penance for so often drawing in my waist to look small and imitate
the looks of my companions, let the ribs draw now with pain for having
drawn with vanity.”
Mother wrote, “It appears
to me I never saw or shall see anything to be compared to her. . . .When
in death’s agony her quivering lips could with difficulty utter one
word, feeling a tear fall on her face, she smiled and said with great
effort: ‘Laugh, Mother, Jesus!’ ”
On the eve of her death, Anna made a
“Consecration at the Foot of the Cross” by which she consecrated herself
to Jesus and offered Him all of her sufferings in union with His “in
expiation of the offenses and grievous sins committed during my life. O
my Jesus, pardon the impatiences, ill humors and numberless other
faults.” She died on March 12. Mother was desolated as never before by
the death of her life companion since her husband’s death. “For three
months after Nina [Anna] was taken I was so often expecting to lose my
senses, and my head was so disordered, that unless for the daily duties
always before me, I did not know much what I did or what I left undone.”
Anna was laid to rest in the cemetery.
She was the third girl after Harriet and Cecilia, all Setons, to be
buried there. The school children decorated their graves with flowers.
There were now 18 Sisters, 30 boarders and 20 day students in the White
House that was surrounded by green fields, garden and a farmyard with
cows, chickens and pigs. All kept in good order according to Mother’s
principles of simplicity, discipline and order on the road to Eternity
in accordance with the Divine Will.
Mother had many financial difficulties
in supporting the community. She was advised not to beg or write appeal
letters as it would be fruitless in those times with little Catholic
sympathy and the economic difficulties brought by the War of 1812 with
England. Her friends and family had always kept her going with her own
frugal savings that she managed to retain from their gifts. She was an
able administrator and decided to pay the community’s own way and
support the school with tuition from the boarders of $100 per year while
still offering free tuition to the poor. The school day was much the
same for the students as it was for the Sisters. Rise at 5:45 am, to
chapel for prayers, breakfast, classes, Rosary, lunch, recreation, more
classes, study, supper at 7:15 pm, reading and bed.
The purpose of the school was not to
make nuns, but to prepare women for the world. As Mother said, “Your
little Mother, my darlings, does not come to teach you how to be good
nuns or Sisters of Charity, but rather I would wish to fit you for that
world in which you are destined to live: to teach you how to be good . .
. mothers of families.”
She taught them to be
virtuous and warned them with a fable about the dangers of the world of
theater and balls. The butterfly asked the owl how to avoid burning its
wings when it approached a burning candle. “The owl,” Mother said,
“counseled her to abstain from looking even at the smoke of it. It is
ever easier to abstain from such pleasures than to use them well.” She
spoke from the voice of her own experience with the fascination of the
theater and balls.
Soon after Anna’s death, Mother’s baby
Rebecca began her march to the grave at the age of ten. She fell on the
ice and injured her hip, but she hid her pain so as not to add to her
mother’s suffering. She suffered and continued walking on it until
spring when Mother learned that she aggravated her injury to the extent
that nothing could be done for it. A tumor developed in her hip and it
broke in the spring of 1816. Rebecca could no longer walk or lie down
and sat in agony on Mother’s knee. She leaned against her to such an
extent that Mother’s left arm became atrophied.
Rebecca was not
afraid to die. She said, “Dearest Mother, you think I am not willing to
die, but I am. Indeed I am. All I fear is my sins.” On November 2, she
said, “I have just been handing Our Lord my little cup. It is now quite
full. He will come for me.” Our Lord accepted the cup and came for her
the next day. Rebecca was only 14 years old. Mother buried her next to
her sisters-in-law Harriet and Cecilia and her daughter Anna.
Her Sons
After the burial of two of her daughters
and with Catherine, the third, in good health, Mother’s anxieties turned
towards her sons, William and Richard. Both of them were raised without
a father in a female household. Later during their schooling, their home
was in a female convent. Neither of them were very brilliant or
talented.
Nineteen-year-old Richard was trying to
find his way in Baltimore. Mother wrote, “You would not guess half the
trials we have had with him in Baltimore through his childish,
thoughtless, disposition.”
William was having a hard time learning
commercial business with the Filicchis in Italy. Mother wrote him,
A mother’s heart, I can truly say, has one continual agony. You have a
hundred ways of forgetting me, but I not for one moment forget you. . .
.
You must take courage with me, and push on, and do not let your mind
rest on the sad thought of future prospects, since the Providence of God
turns out so often quite different from our calculations. . . .You are
but twenty, my beloved, too young yet to begin the world if you even had
means; so, be patient and trust.
Neither
one of them succeeded in business and they both returned to Emmitsburg.
Mother wrote to Fr. Brute, “My poor, poor, poor Richard, William-My God,
oh if the bleeding of a mother’s heart can obtain! Poor, poor, poor
blind ones!” She got William an officer’s position in the Navy through
some influential friends, sent Richard off to Italy to try his hand with
the Filiccis and sent Kit off to visit relatives. Mother settled in to
“pray and dote, dote and pray, [as] poor mother’s all for her darlings.”
In fact, she had many more responsibilities with 20 Sisters and 100
students assigning chores, listening to their problems, disciplining
them, encouraging them, limping from classroom to classroom making
inspections and administering all of the works and business of the
community. Only in her sleepless nights would she write by candlelight
her long, loving letters to her distant children.
The Thief Approaches
Mother wrote, “I'll be wild Betsy to the last.” She had a zeal to “shout
like a madman alone to my God, and roar and groan and sigh and be silent
all together until I had baptized a thousand [Indians] and snatched
these poor victims from hell.” However, she was prevented from doing
this by “rules, prudence, subjections, opinions, etc. – dreadful walls
to a burning soul wild as mine. . . . I am like a fiery horse I had when
a girl, whom they tried to break by making him drag a heavy cart; and
the poor beast was so humbled that he could never more be inspired by
whips or caresses, and wasted to a skeleton until he died.”
In the summer
of 1818, Fr. Babade wrote her, “Ten years are passed; your work is
consolidated. I desire nothing more for you but a happy death.” Mother
wrote to Antonio Filicchi, “It is rather suspected that I, your poor
little sister, am about to go and meet your Filippo [his pre-deceased
brother], but nothing of health can be certain and calculated at my age,
45. I may recover and crack nuts yet with my nose and chin, as they say;
I know not. All I know is, we must all be ready for this dear, dearest
Thief who is to come when lest expected” She wrote to Fr. Brute, “We
talk now all day long of my death and how it will be just like the rest
of the housework. What is it else? What came in the world for? Why in it
so long? But this last great eternal end. . . .”
Fr. Brute described this end.
Her tranquility was perfect; she manifested it in her answers to the
questions concerning her state, which she wished they should occupy
themselves with as little as possible. . . . She continued to follow as
closely as possible the exercise and rules of the house . . . .so calm,
so recollected and so wholly united to her Blessed Lord. Her eyes so
expressive, the look that pierces heaven and the soul visible in it . .
. I require her to renew her vows and she does, “with all my heart.” To
bless her Sisters as being the present Mother, and ask their prayers,
and she does in the simple words, “Yes, I bless them and ask their
prayers.” To bless her daughter Josephine (Kit), and her two sons,
absent, and she does with such a look to heaven.
When I approached, and as I placed the ciborium upon the little table,
she burst into tears, and, sobbing aloud, covered her face with her two
hands. I thought first it was some fear of sin and, approaching her, I
asked,
“Be still, Mother! Peace, peace be to you! Here is the Lord of Peace!
Have you any pain? Do you wish to confess?”
“No, no! Only give Him to me!” she said with an ardor, a kind of
exclamation, and her whole face so inflamed that I was much affected.”
Then Mother received a letter from Richard
that he had returned from Italy and was in debt in Norfolk. Antonio
Filicchi wrote that he had sent Richard home because he was of no use in
his business and worse that he was unwilling to learn to be of use and
was morally unsatisfactory. Of course, she tried to help by writing
someone to help him, “not dearest Antonio, for his relief, but for a
mother’s duty. For many years I have had no prayer for my children but
that Our Blessed God would do everything to them and in them in the way
of affliction and adversity, if only-He will save their soul(s)!”
Richard came to her in disgrace during her dying illness in December and
left a few days later before Christmas.
On January 2, 1821, Mother lay on her
deathbed and said to the gathered Sisters, “I am thankful Sisters, for
your kindness to be present at this trial. Be children of the Church, be
children of the Church.” In the early morning hours of the 4th, she
began to pray daily the prayer of Pius VII, “May the most just, the most
high and the most amiable Will of God be in all things fulfilled,
praised and exalted above all forever.” Finally, she stopped breathing
“without convulsions nor extraordinary movement. . . in the great
silence.”
The next day she was buried in the cemetery
and joined 15 others, including her two daughters and two
sisters-in-law. Fifty Sisters survived her. Fr. Brute wrote,
How profound her
faith and how tender her piety! How sincere her humility, combined with
so great intelligence! How great her goodness and kindness for all!
Her distinguishing characteristic was compassion and indulgence for poor
sinners. Her charity made her watchful never to speak evil of others,
always to find excuses or to keep silence. Her other special virtues
were her attachment to her friends and her gratitude; her religious
respect for the ministers of the Lord and for everything pertaining to
religion. Her heart was compassionate, religious, lavish of every good
in her possession, disinterested in regard to all things.
O Mother, excellent Mother, I trust you are now in the enjoyment of
bliss!
Fruits
Mother raised five orphaned children and
taught school to support them; fed and clothed many widows, nursed the
sick and attended the dying; founded the first religious community in
the United States; was Mother Superior to 50 Sisters and founded the
first Catholic parish school and the first Catholic orphanage in
Philadelphia.
Mother was survived by three children,
William, Richard and Catherine. William married and fathered nine
children one of whom became a Bishop. Richard was only 25 when he died
at sea from a fever contracted after nursing a sick Episcopalian
minister. Catherine, whom Mother had offered to God as a baby in order
to save her father’s soul, became a Sister of Mercy and lived to the age
of 91.
Mother Seton’s religious Sisters grew into
six communities with thousands of members operating hospitals, nursing
schools, homes for the elderly, child-care centers, colleges and
hundreds of grade schools and high schools.
Mother was a wife and mother, widow,
educator, religious sister and foundress who faced the crises of her
life with courage, love and conformity to the will of God. She loved
passionately with an affectionate heart, her husband, children,
relatives, friends and Sisters. But her love of God always came first.
She tried “rather to turn every affection to God, well knowing that
there alone their utmost exercise cannot be misapplied, and most ardent
hopes can never be disappointed.” She was the Mother of the Catholic
Church in the United States with its Father, Archbishop John Carroll. As
a Roman Catholic convert from the Episcopal Church, she is an
intercessor of Christian unity.
Father Brute wrote,” I would say from the
bottom of my heart, out of conviction from long and intimate
acquaintance, that I believe hers was one of those elite souls, with the
like characteristics found in St.. Teresa [of Avila] and St. Jane
Frances de Chantal, just as capable of as unbelievable a holiness, it
being impossible to find similar or greater elevation, purity and love
of God, heaven, supernatural and eternal things than were found in her.”
Saint
On December 18, 1959, Pope John XXIII gave Mother the title of
Venerable. Within two years, two miracles were declared through her
intercession. Sister Gertrude Korzendorfer, D.C. was cured of cancer of
the pancreas in 1935 and Anne Theresa O’Neill was cured of leukemia at
the age of four in 1952. Pope John beatified Mother on Mach 17, 1963.
In
October of 1963, Carl Kalin, a Protestant, was cured of a rare brain
disease after his Catholic wife with many Sisters of Charity invoked
Mother Seton and fastened a first class relic of her to the wall above
his head. He was cured on the last day of a novena to Mother. The cure
was declared to be miraculous and Pope Paul VI dispensed with the need
of a second miracle. On September 14, 1975, he declared, “Elizabeth Ann
Seton is a Saint. She is the first daughter of the United States of
America to be glorified with this incomparable attribute.” Her Feast Day
is January 4, the date of her death.
OTHER ARTICLES BY DAN LYNCH
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