Funding for the the American Women Saints Series on Elizabeth Ann Seton and Frances Xavier Cabrini was provided by: the Catholic Communication Campaign the Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton Foundation Additional funding was provided by the following: My name is Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton.

I was born in 1774 and I died of tuberculosis in 1821 when I was 46 years old.

In 1975 the Catholic Church declared me to be a saint.

In 1975 the Catholic Church declared me to be a saint.

Now, why would the Catholic Church feel that I was special enough to be recognized as a saint?

Was it because after I died, when people prayed to me, miracles happened?

Well, that's partly the reason.

But the major reason I was made a saint was the fact that I had lived a devout religious life.

And that means my life was completely devoted to God and to serving people as Jesus did.

But, you know, I wasn't always a devoutly religious person.

So how did I get to be such a devout person?

Well, that's the interesting thing that I like to talk to you about.

But first, let's go back to 1774.

1774 was the year I was born.

Now, 1774 is two years before the 13 English colonies signed the Declaration of Independence.

In other words, I was a citizen of England.

Now, in those 13 colonies, many of those colonists were patriots.

That is, they wanted to secede so badly from England [DRUMS] that they were willing to go to war and lose their lives.

[GUN FIRE] Now, I don't remember much about that war, except that my family, the Bayleys, they were loyalists, that is, they wanted England to win.

And the man I later married, William Seton Jr., his family, they were loyalists, too.

But in the time between 1775 and 1783, which spans the Revolutionary War, the Patriots battled England.

[GUN FIRE, YELLING] And after many deaths, the Patriots won over the Loyalists.

And now I was no longer an English citizen.

I was a citizen of the United States.

So I grew up in a brand new country.

Now, at that time, slavery was legal.

And both the Bayley and Seton families owned slaves.

For example, when my grandfather died, he willed, to my sister and me, his slave.

At the time, my father, Richard Bailey, was a doctor.

He was the chief health officer of the city of New York.

And a big part of his job was to stamp out disease in Manhattan.

Now, most of Manhattan was farmland but because the tip of Manhattan was a major shipping area for merchandise, slaves, and immigrants, this dense, polluted area of Manhattan, especially during summertime was a hotspot for diseases like yellow fever and typhus.

But because my family was wealthy, we had a country home.

So I could get out of the city and escape these diseases.

Now, let's talk about religion.

My father and my mother were both Anglicans.

In fact, my maternal grandfather was an Anglican minister at Saint Andrew's in Staten Island.

Now, Anglicans are Christians, that is, they believe that Jesus is God, and Anglicanism was one form of Christianity in America.

But let me tell you quickly how Anglicanism came to be.

In the 1500s, the Catholic Church was involved in practices like selling indulgences.

That is, if you pay the church money, the Pope could forgive your sins in the next life.

Now a German priest, Martin Luther, felt that the Catholic Church was corrupt in things like selling these indulgences.

So the Pope excommunicated him.

Other countries in Europe agreed with Martin Luther and protested too.

And they also split off from the Catholic Church.

So the churches that had protested were called Protestant churches.

When England split off from Catholicism, and formed their new church called the Anglican Church, since England owned the 13 colonies, the predominant religion was Anglicanism.

So, in 1774 I was baptized an Anglican.

But after the American Revolution ended in 1783, since the United States was separated from the Church of England, we were now a new religion called Episcopalians.

Same religion, but different name.

Another form of Christianity in the United States was Catholicism.

Right before the Revolution of the two and a half million people in the 13 colonies, only 35,000 were Catholics.

And Catholicism was not tolerated in many of the colonies.

[FIRE] Catholics suffered higher taxation, and some even lost their legal rights just for being Catholic.

And there were always fights between Protestants and Catholics.

[GUN SHOTS, YELLING] While the fighting seemed to be from religious differences or from the Protestants not wanting Americans to switch religions and start tithing to a different church, others say the real reason for the hostility was that Protestants did not want to compete with Catholics for land, jobs and political control.

One group that wanted to see Catholicism expand in the colonies was the Catholic merchants.

Because when merchants share the same religion, they have increased trade with one another.

Now, before the Revolution, there was one colony where Catholicism had already been tolerated for many years, and that colony was Maryland.

And so this is where many of the Catholics lived.

Interestingly, the richest man in the colonies lived in Maryland.

His name was Charles Carroll, and he was a Catholic.

The Carrolls had huge plantations and owned many slaves.

And because of his wealth, he had great political influence.

In fact, Charles Carroll was a congressman, and he was one of the founding fathers and signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Also, Charles had a wealthy, and influential cousin who became a Catholic priest.

The priest's name was John Carroll.

With such wealth and influence of the Carrolls after the Revolution, the Pope had made John Carroll the first American born bishop in the United States.

At the time, the whole United States was considered one diocese and the seat of the diocese was in Maryland.

So Bishop Carroll's job was to expand Catholicism in the United States.

And in order to do that, he needed to do five things: He needed to increase the number of priests serving the United States.

So, he needed to build seminaries.

He also needed to build Catholic schools in order to teach young boys not only the 3Rs but also to inculcate the Catholic religion.

But in order to operate Catholic schools for girls, he needed Sisters to run the schools.

So Carroll needed to establish new communities of Sisters.

Now, there already had been Catholic schools in pre-United States as early as 1727.

For instance, there was one in the French colony of New Orleans.

The nuns teaching in this Catholic school known as Ursuline nuns.

And they were brought in from France.

By the way, New Orleans didn't become part of the United States until 1803 during the Louisiana Purchase.

Now, Carroll could have invited Sisters from Europe, but he wanted to start homegrown American Sisters.

That is, Sisters that were trained here in the United States.

So, in order to do these things, he needed money.

And there were three major sources where Carroll could get the money for this work: the first was from the seat of Catholicism at the Vatican in Rome, another was from tithing from within the communities of United States Catholics, but probably the biggest source was donations from wealthy Catholic merchants.

Now, why would wealthy Catholic merchants donate?

Well, first, they believed that the Catholic religion was the one true faith.

So, they felt it was their duty to expand Catholicism in the United States.

But also, like I said before, when the Catholic merchants helped the Catholic Church expand, then with the Church's growing political influence, the Church would then help grease the wheels of commerce for the merchants.

And therefore, Catholic merchants would enjoy increased trade in ports where Catholicism was more accepted.

One of the Catholic merchant families was from Livorno, Italy.

They were the super wealthy Filicchi family.

The two principle partners were Filippo and his brother Antonio.

They were good friends with Bishop Carroll.

They gave Carroll a lot of the economic help that he needed.

And Carroll, in turn, used the political connections of his wealthy family to help the Filicchis.

Another super rich American merchant family that was very close business partners with the Filicchis, was my future husband's family, the Setons.

The Setons helped the Filicchis maintain strong political connections with people like United States presidents: Washington, Madison, Jefferson and the United States Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton.

Because the Filicchis had such important United States connections, Filippo Filicchi was made United States Consul General at Livorno, Italy.

And because of this important status, the Filicchis were able to maintain quite a competitive edge in their trading, and therefore they became even wealthier.

As I said before, the Bayleys and Setons were wealthy families.

My family on both sides were major players in the world of money and had a great deal of political influence.

My families played a significant role in shaping early United States society.

Okay, so now you know a bit of United States political and religious history.

Now, let's get back to my story.

On January 25th, 1794, I married William Magee Seton Junior.

Now, as I said before, William's father, Seton Sr. was not only a successful merchant but he was also the cashier at the Bank of New York.

My father-in-law was quite a guy.

He was enterprising and very resilient.

He loved to be a merchant.

My husband was another story.

William worked for his father, but wasn't anything like him.

He didn't like the merchant business, and he wasn't eager or resilient.

He was a worrier.

He worried about everything.

And very early on in our marriage, I noticed that he contracted tuberculosis.

So, that was another thing for him and me to worry about.

Anyway, after we got married, we moved to Wall Street.

This was the wealthiest street in Manhattan and probably the wealthiest in the United States.

One of our neighbors was United States Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, Now, this was the type of lifestyle I was used to.

I'm telling you, when I was growing up, I always had the best clothes, jewelry, parties.

Even with education, for example.

While most kids went to a one room schoolhouse that went only up to eighth grade.

You know, those were the schools where the younger kids were taught by the older kids.

Since I was wealthy, I wasn't learning from older students.

I had my own private tutors.

And besides learning the 3Rs, I learned French, I learned philosophy, and I learned music.

I even learned to play the piano very well.

I was very well educated.

Plus, I was big on writing.

I would spend hours not only writing letters to friends, but also I would write out my thoughts about the books I read.

And I was big on reading.

In fact, one of my favorite reading materials was devotional literature, you know, like the Bible.

For some reason, I always felt that I needed to read devotional works to sort of counterbalance the nondevotional stuff.

I must say two religious ideas that were pretty much always on my mind since I was young, were the concepts of God and eternity.

And having this faith brought me peace at difficult times in my life.

For instance, when I was two years old, my mother died and as I grew older, I developed this belief in how happy I would be when I entered eternity and would be with her again.

Then my father remarried and my stepmother didn't love my sister and me very much.

And at several times we were sent to an uncle's family to live with, [HORSE CLIP-CLOP] so I was alone much of the time.

But I can remember thinking that being alone was okay, since there was always God to be happy about.

Even with my father, yes, he loved me, but for long periods he was away tending to his medical practice.

So the concept of God was important to me because I found happiness and also seeing God as my father.

Then when I was in my teens, it was a pretty sad time too, because my father's second marriage was coming apart.

It seems he had a mistress.

Plus, I had some miserable friendships.

So when I was low, I would think to myself, of maybe going into some sort of religious life where I could be shut up from the world and pray and be good always.

One particularly bad night of depression.

I wanted to shut myself out of the world.

I was reading Edward Young's famous Night Thoughts and its last lines set the tone for how I was feeling.

When shall I die to vanity, pain, death?

When shall I die?

When shall I live forever?

So with these words, I went into my father's doctor's bag and took out a bottle of laudanum.

And, well, but I just couldn't do it.

I figured that God was too good to condemn so poor a miserable creature like me.

So I have to tell you, having this faith in God when I was young helped me to cope with stress.

Isn't that funny?

Even though I was wealthy, I still was stressed out as a kid.

Now, what does it tell you about money?

I can tell you firsthand money buys comfort, but it can't buy you happiness.

Anyway, as I got older, my faith got stronger.

And this strong faith in God wasn't a common quality in all educated women in the early 1800s.

This was pretty much something unique to me.

Back then, many women in my social circle were, well, they were always talking about their hair and their dresses and the parties they were going to.

But then I have to admit, to some extent, so was I.

When I was young, I was definitely a materialistic person.

Yes, I had a strong belief in God, but I was also very much attached to material things.

I'll give you an example.

See this hair curl here?

This was the high fashion of the day.

As you can see, everyone had it.

So when this famous artist did this portrait of me I had to show off my curl, too.

You know, looking at this portrait of me, I can remember what I was like as a person.

I was definitely cheerful.

I had a sense of humor.

I had a magnetic personality.

I enjoyed having parties and having delightful conversations with people.

I enjoyed the theater, and I can remember that I wrote extremely well.

In fact, I noticed early on that I had this flair for using words to paint pictures.

And I also remember that I was always conscious of trying not to say things that would make anyone feel bad, unless, of course, I felt they deserved to hear it.

But, you know, it's true now that I think of it, I did have this temper that flared up once in a while.

And my father used to tell me that I needed to adopt a more temperate attitude.

My father, he was a good man.

I loved him a lot.

Anyway, let's get back to my marriage.

So in 1794, at 19 years old, I married William Magee Seton Jr. And here I was moving to my own home on Wall Street.

Although with such luxury, I couldn't help thinking how far I was from being someone that would now be able to attain heaven.

But I would say William and I were pretty happy.

And in seven years, we had five children.

But like I said before, William wasn't into the merchant business.

He was more interested in maybe going to a museum or to the theater or maybe to a concert.

And unfortunately, William's apathetic attitude toward the merchant business brought us big problems.

And here's how those problems started.

In January, of 1798, my father-in-law slipped, broke his hip, and within a year, he was dead.

Now, this was a huge blow for many reasons, beyond the pain of losing him.

First, William's father had remarried and had many more children, but his second wife had died, too.

and had many more children, but his second wife had died, too.

So besides my kids, William and I became guardian to six of my father-in-law's children.

But my house on Wall Street was too small for all these extra children.

So we had to move to a bigger house.

And we moved into my father-in-law's mansion on Stone Street.

And Rebecca, who was William's half sister, lucky she was old enough and kind enough to help me take care of all the kids.

In fact, she actually turned out to be my best friend, or, as I called her, my soul mate.

So that problem of the kids and the house got solved.

The bigger issue came when William had to take over his father's business.

And, well, like I said, he just wasn't gifted in the merchant business.

And so the business started to fail pretty quickly.

I mean, I even tried to help him by being his secretary.

But the complexities of business were beyond his comprehension, and it drove him crazy.

And as a result of the anxiety, William's tuberculosis got worse.

Then add to that, William wasn't into religion.

He believed in God, but his belief wasn't a comfort to him like it was to me.

So my husband was a wreck physically and mentally.

I also noticed that William's sister, Rebecca, was developing symptoms of tuberculosis, too.

So things were getting tough.

But we still had money.

We still lived very well, and we had plenty of servants.

But, you know, even with the money and servants, I was starting to find value in tempering my emotions, just like my father had suggested to me years earlier.

Now, if there was a cause to be very happy, I was more inclined to be skeptical about letting my emotions run away with me, knowing that my happiness would probably be shattered.

I also noticed that I was reading more Christian literature, and in it I was trying to find out what I needed to focus on to give me peace.

And what I was finding was that the answer was not found in things of this world but of the next world.

What that means is that nothing temporal and nothing material could help me.

Only God could help me.

And so I saw I was gaining peace by becoming more and more detached from the world.

Then in 1798, our world began to collapse.

William's merchant company suffered a major setback [GLASS SHATTERS] because of the Quasi-War.

We lost our merchant ships and all the merchandise on them.

[CANNON FIRE] And William simply wasn't shrewd enough to restrategize his way out of this.

So now it was getting very hard to repay our debts.

And little by little, our company was falling into bankruptcy.

At one point, I found myself waiting at my front door to prevent premature seizures of my property by the sheriff's officers.

So with this major hit on our finances, we had to sell the Stone Street house, and we moved into a smaller place on State Street, which was previously occupied by my father's mistress.

And if that wasn't enough, then in 1801, guess what?

My father died.

God, I can still picture him in his Staten Island quarantine hospital running, round the clock, helping the poor and the immigrants try to stave off infectious diseases, only to end up contracting one himself.

Wow.

I loved my father.

He and I were a lot alike.

His death just crushed me.

And yet, with my father's death and the failure of our business, I was turning more and more towards God.

Not that I was running away from reality, but I was running away from the silly idea that somehow getting my father back or getting our business back would fix everything and that I could be happy.

Now, I was finally settling into the fact that temporal happiness was simply a fleeting emotion, and should never be the object of my life.

Only God should be the object of my life.

But I was kind of alone in these thoughts.

You know, I had no one to bounce things off of.

Then in 1802, I made a new friend.

His name was Reverend John Hobart.

John Hobart appeared just at the right moment I needed him.

You see, he was this new priest at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan.

And I would go to services and listen to Hobart.

He was a fervent, inspiring preacher who wanted to revive the Episcopal Church.

You know, Revivalism was a new movement sweeping through Protestant churches at the time to sort of wake up the congregations, to inject new life into them.

Well, it couldn't have happened at a better time for me since Hobart was echoing the ideas that I was thinking that I needed to focus on God and not worldly things or momentary gratification.

At Mass, he would stand at the pulpit excited to tell us that heaven and not a house should be our goal.

That we needed to be there for others and to stop feeling sorry for our minuscule selves and that we sinners needed to work to be reconciled with God for eternal happiness.

Well, that's all I needed to hear.

I became obsessed with preparing myself for death.

That is, I was obsessed with making myself acceptable to God.

Otherwise, when I died, God would not accept me into heaven.

So with this new attitude, I actually saw that I was maturing.

I could see that I had gone from a frivolous girl who was concerned with hairstyles and social events to now a person whose happiness would be in eternity.

And I would reinforce those thoughts by writing down my meditations.

For example, here's one of my meditations from Ascension Day, which, by the way, is the 40th day after Easter when Jesus ascends into heaven.

Oh, that my soul might go up with my blessed Lord, that it might be where he is.

Also, Thy will be done.

My time is in thy hands.

But oh, my Savior.

While the pilgrimage of this life must still go on to fulfill Thy gracious purpose, let the spirit of my mind follow thee to Thy mansions of glory.

So it wasn't about earth.

It was about heaven.

It wasn't about what I wanted.

It was about what God wanted.

And this thinking was good because, boy, I needed a lot of strength to deal with my husband.

His business and our fortunes were near their end and unfortunately, so was his health.

In fact, doctors told us that a warmer climate might help him recover.

So we planned an escape to Italy to improve his health and where he could also meet with his business partners, the Filicchis.

So I packed up the rest of the kids to live with relatives.

I took my oldest child, Anna, with us.

And on October 2nd, 1803, we sailed to Italy.

I mean, yeah, we didn't have to go all the way to Italy to get to a warmer climate.

We could have gone to a southern U.S. state.

You know, I sometimes wonder if we weren't just escaping from our troubles.

You know, debtor's prison.

But what did I really expect this trip would do for us?

Because I wasn't very hopeful that William would recover.

He was just too sick.

But we went anyway.

I simply resigned everything to God's will.

So we sailed in October of 1803, and a month later, we arrived at the port of Livorno.

And because William was coughing and look quite sick as he got off the boat, the Italians immediately quarantined us, fearing we might be bringing yellow fever into Italy.

So instead of staying in a clean, dry, warm palazzo, we were locked up in a cold, damp dungeon.

And since the word quarantine comes from the Italian word quaranta, which means 40, we expected to be in this hell for 40 days.

You know, if there was any minuscule hope that the warm Italian climate could help William recover or at least help him improve.

Now, it was out of the question.

I mean, every day he was visibly wasting away.

Why didn't they let us out?

I was so angry that my poor husband had to be subjected to these conditions.

I tell you, I would have loved to have torn down those stone walls and let them fall onto the heads of those guards.

Well, I tried to keep a lid on my temper by writing a journal that I was going to give to my soul mate, Rebecca.

And to find peace, I prayed and read the Bible with Anna.

We even started to read the Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ."

But nothing.

No peace.

And I prayed more.

And still no peace.

And that really scared me.

Was God listening to me?

Did God care?

Was God even there?

I tell you, I wanted to quit, but instead I started to plead for mercy and strength.

And then the veil of dread started to lift.

I actually started to calm down.

And you know what that was?

I was feeling God's mercy.

I know it was.

So I read the Scriptures even more, and my mind began to clear.

It was then that I saw once again that it wasn't about me.

My job was to make it comfortable for my husband and my daughter.

For my husband's comfort, what I needed to do was to make him understand that it was not only okay for him to die, but how sweet it would be.

I wanted him to understand that the life we had been leading was not the real one.

Another thing I could clearly see now was that this quarantine experience was a gift from God to not only teach myself patience and how to learn to pray unceasingly, but remember, my husband had never been a religious person, so this was my opportunity and William's opportunity to get his faith in order.

That is, to make him more acceptable to God when he entered eternity.

So we were finally released from the lazaretto 15 days early and we moved into an apartment in Pisa.

The Filicchis: Filippo and his brother Antonio, and their wives, Mary Cowper, who was an American from Boston, and Amabilia, Mary Cowper, who was an American from Boston, and Amabilia, they took such loving care of us.

But very soon William wasted away.

That's what tuberculosis does to you.

And right before he died, he held out his hands to me and asked me to fly away with him.

And the next day, he was buried in the English cemetery at Livorno.

Well, that ordeal was over, and I was exhausted by the experience.

But the Filicchi family was so kind to my daughter and me, and seeing that I had a very pious attitude toward God, they introduced me to one of their priest friends.

And while this priest was trying to comfort me for my loss, he was also trying to give me the hard sell about why I should become a Catholic.

Before I left for Italy, Hobart warned me that something like this might happen.

So I listened respectfully, but, you know, I wasn't interested.

Now, since we had a couple of weeks before we would sail back to the U.S., Filippo and Antonio suggested it might be good for me to get out and take a small tour with them of Florence.

So one of the first places we visited was the Church of the Annunciation.

Wow.

I had never seen a church like this.

It was spectacular.

And it was huge.

In another church called Santa Maria Novella, I saw this incredible canvas called The Descent from the Cross.

The whole day I couldn't stop thinking about it.

These paintings, these churches, they were certainly humanity's best efforts of art and architecture and all done to praise God.

And these churches were a far cry from the plain interiors of my Protestant churches.

Somehow I felt that these spaces weren't built just to impress people.

I felt like they were really sacred spaces.

But what was eye opening was that people who gathered in this church were unconcerned with anyone but themselves.

Their emotions were, how should I say, unrestrained?

They were on their knees reciting prayers and rosaries.

It was quite an atmosphere.

The raw emotions on these people, I mean, you never saw anything like that in any of my sedate, respectable churches back home.

And instead of being a conspicuous outsider, I felt completely anonymous.

And, you know, this was a relief because it really gave me a chance to finally pour out my grief for my husband.

Another eye opener was a book Filippo gave me.

It was called Introduction to a Devout Life by Saint Francis de Sales.

It's sort of a Catholic road map in how to gain heaven.

So I started to read it.

And at one point, I actually found myself down on my knees begging God to show me the light.

And then Filippo hit me with something else.

Get this.

He said: The Catholic faith was the one true faith.

And without practicing it, I could not be acceptable to God.

Again, I listened respectfully, but when I got back to my room, I wondered, Is he right?

Could I be wasting my time being a Protestant?

It didn't seem right.

I believed in God.

I was trying to imitate Christ in the actions in my life.

I certainly was no perfect person, but I was willing to work toward being as perfect as possible.

What's the difference if I was a Catholic or a Protestant?

The final eye-opener, which kind of knocked me out, was Filippo and Antonio took me to one of their church Masses.

I have two important things to say about this: First of all, I didn't know this, but Catholics could go to Mass every day if they wanted to.

Now, that was something I would have loved to do back home.

Now, that was something I would have loved to do back home.

My church only had one service a week.

The second important thing about the Catholic Mass and by the way, this is a big one is something called Transubstantiation.

Now, I was told by Filippo that during the mass, when the bread gets consecrated that it actually transubstantiates or transforms into the actual body of Christ, which means that if I eat the bread, I would be consuming Jesus's actual body.

And if I drank the wine, I would be drinking his actual blood.

Well, I got so emotional, I had to cover my face with my hands.

You know, you've got to understand, in my Protestant religion, the bread and wine, when they're consecrated, they're only symbols of Jesus.

But Filippo is telling me that in the Catholic Church, this is no symbol.

The bread and wine turn into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus.

My God, was this true?

How could this be?

You mean I could actually eat the host and have Christ within me?

Well, this scared me as much as it excited me.

And I was scared because, well, if this was true, what have I been doing my whole life as a Protestant?

And if it was true, well, guess what?

I'd have to convert.

But to convert, well, that would be insane.

I just didn't want to think about it.

I mean, all this was blowing my mind.

Here I was taking a trip to save my husband, and now it was turning into a trip to save my soul.

Finally, it came time to sail home.

It was April 1804.

Before we left, Filippo gave me a bound pamphlet on Catholic philosophy that he wrote himself.

And then we boarded the ship.

Anna, me and Antonio.

That's right.

Antonio Filicchi accompanied us all the way back to the U.S.. Now, Antonio and I had become good friends during my Florence tour.

He said he had decided to escort me back to the U.S. on this voyage in order to protect me, but also because he felt that his business in the U.S. required his presence.

As a woman alone with a child, I certainly was grateful for his gallantry.

And then something unexpected happened.

On the ship, I fell in love with Antonio.

I was no longer married but Antonio was.

I have no excuse.

I mean, no matter what I told myself that the worldly things of this life are trivial, that the important things are not in this world, but in the next.

I gave in to my passions anyway.

I wrote in my journal to Rebecca that this gratification could only have been the work of the enemy of my soul, the devil himself.

All this time I had been trying to be devout, to make myself most acceptable to God.

And in one fell swoop, I was now one of those people that Jesus in Matthew's Gospel referred to as least in the Kingdom of Heaven.

I tried to rationalize it.

I tried to make excuses, but all I knew is that I had sinned, and what a miserable wretch I was.

Then the sails of our ship lost wind off Spain near Valencia and our ship was boarded.

Boy, was I scared.

Not because I thought they might kill us, but that if I should die, I would die a sinner.

So I would pray this over and over: Oh, my!

If I should die in the midst of so much sin and so little penitence.

How terrible it will be to fall into Thy hands.

Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, still be merciful to a miserable sinner.

In June of 1804, Antonio and I got back to New York, and we parted ways.

I was not eager to see him go.

Yes, I had sinned.

And now I needed to make amends.

And yes, I needed to go to church and beg for absolution.

And yet I was still thinking a lot about him.

I just couldn't help it.

Anyway, I was so happy to see the rest of my children again.

And of course, I had to break it to them that their father wasn't coming back.

But I also told them that he was in a better place.

And I was eager to give my soul mate Rebecca, my journal.

But when I went to see her, I was greeted by a person that had already been devastated by tuberculosis.

God, not Rebecca, too.

Oh, tuberculosis.

The Seton curse.

What could I say?

But God, thy will be done.

Oh, it was so hard to swallow those words, but I had to.

First William.

Now my best friend, Rebecca.

She was going to die, too.

You know, Rebecca was my soul mate.

I can't say that too lightly.

Yes, William was there for me, but Rebecca understood me.

She understood my religious bent and got into it herself.

Remember when William's younger siblings were living with us at Stone Street?

Three of them.

Rebecca, Cecilia, and Harriet.

We had formed, like, a little community together.

We called it a society of sisters.

At night, I would play the piano and we would sing hymns.

[PIANO] Then we would say prayers together.

And Rebecca and I on the occasional Sundays when they were giving out Communion, we would run from one Episcopal church to the other, so that we might receive as often as we could.

People laughed at us.

But that's what Rebecca and I did.

We were into this.

And now Rebecca was slipping away.

And so was my society of sisters.

God, everything was so fragmented in my life.

Anyway, I needed to move on.

I had a lot to do.

I needed to take care of my family.

I needed to take care of my family.

So the first thing was I had to get a place for us to live.

And I did that.

I found a house.

And the plan was that I would live on the top floor and rent out the bottom floor.

The only problem was I didn't have the money to pay for it.

But my rich godmother, Sarah, and my husband's brother James, who was still doing very well in his insurance business, stepped in and bought the place for me.

So thanks to my family, my kids had a roof over their heads, and we finally had some peace.

Well, almost.

Because then Rebecca passed away.

You know, Rebecca was six years younger than me.

She was a very loving and very spiritual person.

Now, what does that mean, that she was spiritual?

Well, first of all, it means that the goal of any of her actions was never for money.

It also meant that she was very humble.

She felt that there was something greater than herself, and of course, that greater entity was God.

She also had this uncanny, innate sense of wisdom.

Now, where does this wisdom come from?

Well, it doesn't come from education.

Her wisdom was what you would call a grace or a gift from God.

And she didn't get this grace from God because she was a good person.

There have been plenty of people throughout time who got graces from God who were not good people.

Think of Saint Paul.

He certainly didn't start life out as a good person.

He killed Christians.

And yet this abominable sinner got a ton of grace from God.

Now, how can that be?

Well, we don't know.

For some reason, God gave Saint Paul grace to become an incredibly important, wisdom-filled person.

Well, Rebecca had been given the grace of wisdom, too.

And I benefitted from it.

She was, let's say, a sort of spiritual adviser for me.

I tell you, I valued her opinion.

And see, that's why I wrote my Italian journal for her.

I needed her to read it and unpack the events that had happened to me as only she knew how.

But now her voice was out of my life.

Why would God do this?

I don't know.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

So all these events that were happening around me, I mean, it was clear that they were pushing me to become more and more resigned, not resigned to living, but resigned to the idea that I could not have control over anything.

I was learning more that I had to bow to the will of God.

And what was God's will telling me about converting?

I don't know.

God seemed silent on this.

Conversion.

I couldn't get it out of my mind.

I also couldn't get out of my head what Filippo said to me that time that Catholicism was the one true faith.

But I just couldn't make a decision.

I was in analysis paralysis And when I would write to Antonio about this, he would write back that he was annoyed that I hadn't made the decision to convert.

I talked to John Hobart about this dilemma and of course he thought I was crazy and he showed no sympathy for me.

He told me to throw away my ideas of converting, that the Catholic Church was corrupt, that the Episcopal Church adhered to the primitive doctrine of Jesus.

He called Transubstantiation a fake.

Hobart ripped Filippo's pamphlet ideas to shreds.

Why was he so afraid of my conversion?

Could it be that losing an elite member to conversion would be a major embarrassment for him?

Well, suffice it to say that Hobart was no longer someone I could confide in about God, let alone conversion.

And speaking about conversion, this couldn't be just some ideological decision on my part.

I had to consider my relatives.

And there was no talking to any of them about this.

When I broached the subject with them, they were repulsed.

They saw Catholics as lowlifes.

They saw the Catholic Church as a place of spitting and pushing.

And look, they weren't wrong.

Let's face it, the Catholic Church at this point was made up of immigrants, many of them in poverty.

And to be honest, these were not people for whom I felt a fondness.

Look, what kind of life would my children and I look forward to if I became Catholic?

My rich Protestant relatives would disown me.

And what would that mean?

It meant that whatever money they could help me with would no longer be available to my children and me.

I mean, I didn't care about the money, but I did care about the welfare of my children.

I still wanted my children to have a comfortable home and a wholesome education.

Plus subjecting my children to poverty.

I mean, that's basically the same as exposing them to disease.

Why do they have to suffer because of my religious decisions?

I tell you, conversion for me was like suicide.

So between my family's aversion to Catholicism, and my economic situation, I had to set aside the idea of conversion for a while.

And when Antonio found out, well, let me tell you, he would have none of this.

He was livid.

He even promised me money to alleviate my economic situation.

And of course, I loved him dearly for his generosity.

But what I really wanted to see was Antonio himself.

And he knew this, but he was distancing himself more and more from me.

One reason was that my merchant relatives were beginning to mistrust Antonio, and this was beginning to financially damage his trade business.

Ultimately, I knew social distancing was the right thing, but I didn't like it.

I wanted to be with Antonio.

Still, I continued to decline conversion, and Antonio persisted.

He even wrote to Bishop Carroll to intervene, and the Bishop actually wrote back.

I was so flattered.

I couldn't believe that the one Catholic bishop in all the United States was actually taking the time to deal with me.

I couldn't help asking myself why Carroll himself was giving my matter such personal attention.

Could it have been that Antonio was wealthy and influential and Carroll wanted to stay connected to that money?

Or that I was a Protestant elite, and that conversion to Catholicism by a person like me would look good for Carroll?

Well, I don't know.

Carroll's letters were interesting, though.

He had mentioned to Antonio that he was actually skeptical about my conversion.

He wrote, She ought to consider whether the tears she sheds and the prayers she offers to heaven are purely for God's sake and the prayers she offers to heaven are purely for God's sake and arise solely from compunction for sin.

And about my reluctance to convert.

Carroll wrote that: A fear arises in my mind that God discovers in her some lurking imperfection and defers the final grace of her conversion till her soul be entirely purged of its irregular attachments.

I'm sure that by irregular attachments He was referring to my relationship with Antonio.

Also, I could see that Carroll, in his letter, was being careful not to overly champion my conversion.

Think about it.

If the powers that be like Presidents: John Adams or Jefferson had found out that Carroll was strong-arming Protestant elites like me to convert over to the Catholic religion, the tiny bit of tolerance that Catholics were now enjoying in the U.S., might have been pulled out from under them.

[FIRE] So I could see that Carroll was playing his cards safely and his advice to me was noncommittal.

He said that I needed to continue to investigate my motives and emotions and continue to read Scripture.

So that's what I did.

So that's what I did.

But I still continue to struggle.

At church on Sundays, I found my mind wandering.

At Church on Sundays, I found my mind wandering.

First it wandered across the street to St Peter's Catholic Church.

And then I found my mind speaking to the Blessed Sacrament at St Peter's, instead of looking toward the plain naked altar of my own Church.

I also found my mind praying to Mary and begged her to guide me to the true faith if I wasn't in it.

But still, the answer did not come.

I even started reading more literature, like The Confessions of Saint Augustine.

I figured if he was a sinner and so was I, maybe I could learn something.

I'm telling you, I was completely absorbed in my quest for the answers, nearly at the expense of neglecting my children.

But the answer did not come.

And neither did Antonio.

I didn't see him and he even stopped writing to me.

He was obviously afraid of our relationship.

And ironically, through Antonio's silence, one thing was clear about God, which was that by depriving me of Antonio's affection, God was drawing me nearer to himself.

But it was at Mass in January of 1805 that the answer finally came.

This is how it happened.

That Sunday, the Bishop was giving absolution to the whole congregation.

That's how absolution is given in the Episcopal Church.

It's not given to any individual.

It's given to everyone at the same time.

Now, I've been part of these mass absolutions many times before.

but this time I remembered from Hobart's writings that in the Protestant Church, no one has the power to absolve sin.

So the Bishop's absolution was really just an announcement, a kind of reminder to us saying that God was willing to forgive all those who truly repented.

Well, I couldn't accept this.

I wanted to be really absolved, wiped clean of my sins in the way Catholic priests claim that they can directly release me from my guilt.

Besides, what I had been through with Antonio, I needed to get real absolution.

But then the bigger issue was at Communion.

I nearly fainted.

I realized that I wasn't receiving the actual body and blood of Christ.

I was just receiving a symbol.

I couldn't accept any of this.

It all made me crazy.

I couldn't accept any of this.

It all made me crazy.

I kept thinking, Why can't the Protestant faith give me the actual body and blood of Christ?

They have the responsibility to do so.

Jesus said so himself in John 6:55 He said to the crowds at Capernaum: Unless you eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, you can have no part with Me.

Well, I had to be part of Jesus.

I needed to receive the real Body and Blood of Christ.

Why was I wasting time in this world of make believe?

So that was it.

The answer had finally come.

No matter what the cost would be to my children, no matter what blowback I got from my relatives, I was going to go to the true church, the Roman Catholic Church.

So on March 14th, 1805 at Saint Peter's Roman Catholic Church on Barclay Street in Manhattan, I stood at the altar with Antonio Filicchi, and I made my profession of faith, which began my conversion to Catholicism.

Now, just making a profession of faith didn't make me a Catholic.

I still had four more sacraments to receive first.

Well, actually, I wouldn't have to be baptized since getting baptized as a Protestant is allowed.

But then I had to receive the Sacrament of Penance.

That is, I would have to go to confession.

And the sinner that I was, that couldn't happen quickly enough for me.

After that, I would finally get to receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

And then last, after I received the Holy Spirit during Confirmation, I would finally be Catholic.

And, you know, I was excited to get confirmed because since the Bishop confers this sacrament, I finally got to meet Bishop Carroll.

And I must say we hit it off very well.

I think he liked my sense of humor.

So anyway, I converted to Catholicism, and now I was finally at peace.

Well, for the time being.

My next step was to generate some income.

A friend suggested that we start a plan to create a boarding house and take in some boys from a nearby school.

But this plan never came to fruition.

Some other friends then wanted to open a school for Protestant girls, and they wanted me to be the teacher.

for Protestant girls, and they wanted me to be the teacher.

But after Hobart found out I had converted to Catholicism, he spread the word that I was out to proselytize the students into the Catholic religion.

And the school-for-girls-plan failed, too.

So being a Catholic in New York was already making things very difficult.

I started to think about uprooting my family and moving to where more Catholics lived.

But I decided to stay where I was because it turns out my relatives didn't completely disown me.

So of course I wanted to remain near them.

But still, being Catholic made things tough.

First of all, I needed someone to act as a spiritual adviser for me.

You know, like the role Rebecca and Hobart had filled in my life, because the priests at St Peter's, my new parish, well, I was getting no spiritual companionship from them.

[DRIPPING WATER] So to help me, Antonio had already secured me a priest from Boston.

His name was Father Cheverus, and he became someone who would listen and guide me.

Then, I didn't like the negative worldly influences New York City was having on my boys.

And I was worried that by growing up in the Catholic faith, they would be ridiculed.

So, I started making plans about getting my sons into a good Catholic school, and I had Antonio look into this.

And he suggested I move to Montreal, Canada, where he knew of a Catholic school for boys, and where he also thought I might be able to get a job as a teacher nearby.

At first, the thought of going to Canada didn't appeal to me.

My boys didn't know French and the Filicchis didn't have much influence there.

And then because of a fire, the school didn't have room for my boys anyway.

So Montreal wasn't looking good.

But the boarding house for boys finally took shape and my job was to feed them, do their wash and do the mending.

So now I was able to make some money, but I found the boys to be unruly, and I was having such problems getting them to even listen to me.

And as time went on, I felt my devotional life was going to pot.

While I yearned to lead more of a religious life, [GLASS SHATTERS ] I couldn't because of my responsibility as a parent and the enormous work from my boarding house.

Plus, St. Peter's was becoming more and more a disordered confusion.

Between sexual abuse allegations and political leanings of its priests and its unruly poor congregation, I was finding it very difficult to find enjoyment there.

So after a while, all I knew was that New York City was not the place for me and that I needed to reshape my situation so I could raise my kids, but also have a serious religious life.

And then I got sick and started to obsess on the idea that if I died, my kids would be orphaned, and then worse, they would be raised by Protestant relatives.

So, I revisited the plan for Antonio to find my sons a Catholic school, and Antonio suggested I put them in a Catholic boarding school in either Washington D.C. or Baltimore.

Antonio then visited with Bishop Carroll to have him intercede in getting my sons into the Baltimore school.

But instead, Carroll suggested that I send my boys to another school nearby, that he founded: Georgetown College.

Carroll said he would even pay part of the cost.

And of course, Antonio said he would pay the remainder.

Isn't that great?

[HORSE CLIP-CLOP] So, I sent my boys off to a great Catholic school.

Boy, that was a load off my mind.

Things were certainly falling into place.

[HORSE NEIGH] Now, Cecilia Seton, remember her?

She was my husband William's little sister.

She and Rebecca and Harriet were part of my sisters' society when we were all living at Stone Street.

Well, at this point, she was 14 years old and living with other family members.

And because I converted to Catholicism, she became obsessed with the idea of converting, too.

Unfortunately, Cecilia was also suffering from the Seton curse: tuberculosis.

And of course, what was on my mind?

All I could think of was that if she died, I didn't want her dying outside of the true faith.

So I secretly helped Cecilia convert.

I was so happy and proud of her.

But when Cecilia's guardians had found out what I did, well, not only did they disown me, but some even threatened to burn down the house I was living in.

[BURNING] Plus, Cecilia's guardians threw her out of the house, so she came to live with me.

And along with her sister, we secretly revived our prayer circle again.

But still, my devotional life was in the pits.

This prayer circle thing was nice, but it wasn't nearly what I craved.

I wanted to live more like a religious, like a nun.

But I had children, so of course I couldn't do that.

But that's what I wanted.

And then I had my watershed event.

It was one of those moments that only someone looking back at my life would have said, You see, this is all God's plan.

Here's what happened.

The president of St. Mary's College in Baltimore, Father Louis DuBourg, had stopped by at Saint Peter's.

I met him after Mass, and afterwards we got to talking.

It seems Cheverus had told him about me.

So I told him about my plan of going to Montreal, staying at a convent and assisting as a teacher.

He told me to forget Montreal, that he could help me to set up a school for girls in Baltimore and bring my sons up from Georgetown to Saint Mary's.

Wow.

This was like a dream.

Plus the fact that my whole family would be together.

Cheverus, hearing about the meeting, even wrote to me and told me to take DuBourg's offer.

But Carroll was cautious, saying DuBourg always had big plans, but he didn't have the money to back it up.

So, I ended up putting DuBourg's idea out of my head.

Then, Cecilia's family summoned her back to use her help.

So I lost Cecilia.

And then my boarding house was falling apart.

I couldn't control the boys any longer, so I had to find another line of work.

Plus, there was talk of war.

[CANNON FIRE] What a mess.

Instead of being submerged in a religious life, dedicated to God, I was swimming in all this worldly nonsense.

[ABSTRACT SWIRLING SOUND] Where was the devotional life I was yearning for?

I even tried to assuage my desire by making myself look more religious, by wearing black like the nuns I saw in Italy.

And I topped it off with a black Quaker bonnet.

But of course, just dressing the part wasn't enough.

I tell you, I had to get out of New York City.

One way or another, I had to find a situation where I could lead a much deeper religious life.

So I wrote to Carroll asking about the Montreal idea again.

But he had other things on his mind and told me to wait.

Then DuBourg came to visit New York City a second time and made the offer again to help me start a girls' school.

And he also said that if I could find the money to build a school, he said he had a plot of land that I could use.

Well, this plan started to sound too good to be true.

Cheverus immediately wrote to me and seconded DuBourg's offer.

So, that was that.

Without waiting for Bishop Carroll's consent, I packed up my things and my girls, and in June 1808, we set sail for Baltimore.

Out to the Atlantic, down the U.S. coast, into Chesapeake Bay, then up the Patapsco right into Baltimore.

And when I got to Saint Mary's, the plan was that Dubourg wanted me to rent a house where I would start teaching.

Meanwhile, I would get my boys out of Georgetown and put them in the school at Saint Mary's.

Plus, DuBourg said he would pay for all their tuition.

And then while I was starting to teach, he then wanted me to ask Antonio to pay for the building of a much bigger schoolhouse on nearby land.

Okay, so I realized that maybe it wasn't so much that DuBourg wanted me as much as he wanted Filicchi money to expand Catholicism.

And if that was his real motive, I didn't mind because at least I was part of the process.

Plus, this move did a lot for me in many other ways.

First, it was getting me out of anti-Catholic New York.

Then it would give me a job as a teacher and allow me to generate some income.

My sons would also get a free and solid education and would be living near me.

Plus, I'd have a house where I could live with my daughters and give them schooling at the same time.

So, this new plan was really giving me something my family hadn't had for a long time: Peace and stability.

And one more thing.

When I got to Baltimore, it was totally confirmed in my mind that this really was God's plan because the house I was to stay in, guess what?

It was right next door to Saint Mary's Chapel.

In fact, it was so close that I could hear the altar bells from my room.

[CHURCH BELLS] Was this heaven or what?

One issue though, I had developed a pain in my chest.

You know what it was?

Over the next couple of months, things developed so fast.

I got my school underway and I had a new spiritual advisor.

His name was Father Pierre Babade Boy, was I able to connect with him.

And Babade, seeing my zealousness, he started to implant in me that maybe I could be more than a school teacher.

Now, either he was reading my mind or God was using him to provoke me because I was already thinking that same thought.

I was contemplating that I needed to become more than just a girls' teacher.

I mean, I couldn't see myself as just simply being someone who would correct young girls' attitudes in order to make them acceptable to society.

I was thinking that maybe I could somehow join a religious community, you know, like a nun.

join a religious community, you know, like a nun.

Now, look, I'm not the first widow to think this way.

Many before me had become nuns, and some had even become saints like Saint Rita and Saint Paula.

By the way, becoming a nun is something I can never do as an Episcopalian.

Because after the Reformation, [HAMMERING] the Anglicans kicked out religious orders like monks and nuns.

I mean, why do you think you see so many abbey ruins in England?

Because during the Protestant Reformation, during the 1500s, King Henry the Eighth shut down all the Catholic monasteries and convents and took ownership of all the buildings, land and money.

So, being an Episcopalian I could never have been a nun.

Anyway, here I was looking for something new again.

You know, it's funny, just when things are starting to become peaceful and stable for my family, here I go [EXPLOSION] blowing it all up again and pushing the envelope.

But I realized that this is my M.O.

I can't stay still.

I've got to keep moving forward.

My father was like this, too.

And I don't know if this type of behavior is a gift or a flaw.

Or maybe it's God directing me.

Who knows?

But anyway this is what I was thinking, and my thoughts didn't stop there.

I also had on my mind that I should be the one to start a religious community, that I could be the mother of many spiritual daughters.

Imagine, I wasn't even a nun.

Where did I get off thinking that I could start my own community when I myself had never had any religious formation?

But then look at Saint Louise de Marillac.

She was a widow and even co-founded her own religious community.

So, I guess what I was thinking was not anything original.

Alright, back to Father Babade.

He was zealous.

He was really into religion.

I mean, so were priests like DuBourg and Carroll.

But they were, how should I put it?

Their piety was sober and reserved.

But Babade, well, you know, he got into the smells and bells of the liturgy.

I mean, the man wept when he said Mass.

And that's the way I wanted to experience my religious life, too.

So, why shouldn't I become a nun?

Why couldn't I start my own community?

And Babade, psyched that I was headed in this direction, took the lead.

On a trip to Philadelphia, he actually started telling people that I had a new religious community starting in Baltimore.

The next thing I knew, two young women showed up at my place looking to join.

Can you beat that?

I wasn't even a nun yet, and I already had two members in my community.

So, it looked like this community idea was really starting to take shape.

But what about my family?

I was still a mother to five children.

If I was going to be a spiritual mother to other women, I certainly didn't want to end up being like my father and be absent to my own flesh and blood.

Then it hit me.

Were all these ideas of a religious community just some silly thinking on my part?

Was this idea what God wanted?

Or was it what I wanted?

Well, I couldn't answer that question, but I moved forward as if it was what God wanted.

Because if it wasn't, well, I'm sure He would let me know soon enough.

So, since I needed to build a bigger place to hold both the growing community and the school, what do you think was the next thing I had on my mind?

You guessed it: money.

Remember that plot of land DuBourg said he had for me?

Well, I started to focus my efforts on getting the money to build a new school on it.

So, I tried to contact Antonio, but I couldn't get in touch with him.

So, then I had another idea.

I wanted to ask this rich fellow named Samuel Cooper if he was willing to donate money to start this community that I would lead.

Now, who was Samuel Cooper?

Remember when I moved my sons out of Georgetown College to Saint Mary's in Baltimore?

Well, on a trip to Georgetown, I had met Samuel Cooper.

[HORSE CLIP-CLOP] He was a sea captain who converted to Catholicism, and now he was a seminarian.

Quite zealous, actually.

I kept thinking that if we had not devoted ourselves to God, who knows how our attraction for each other would have ended?

Anyway, I figured Cooper might donate some money for my cause.

But before I asked him, I first told the plan to DuBourg.

And check this out.

After I left DuBourg, that same night, Cooper visited DuBourg and told him that he wanted to donate $10,000, hoping my new community would help educate the poor.

So, DuBourg must have been so delighted that his land in Baltimore would now be developed.

But here's the caveat.

Cooper said he didn't want the community to be in Baltimore.

He said he wanted the community to be in a place called Emmitsburg.

Now, Emmitsburg was 50 miles from Baltimore, and the property Cooper wanted to buy for the community was in the middle of the woods alongside of a mountain.

Still, I was thinking, why Emmitsburg?

Well, listen, the plot thickens.

And it all starts with this priest named John DuBois, whom Bishop Carroll placed previously into the Emmitsburg area.

When Dubois was placed there, he bought up some land for himself.

Now you see, Dubois had always wanted to join DuBourg's order, the Sulpicians, but they rejected him.

So Dubois came up with this plan.

He gave them his land and in exchange, they allowed him to become a member of their order and with this land DuBourg asked Dubois to start a seminary.

So now Cooper, who was a seminarian with the Sulpicians, knew and admired Dubois and thought it would be great to place my community near Dubois's fledgling seminary to help serve the poor people of the area.

But DuBourg and even Bishop Carroll didn't like this location.

They would have rather had Cooper's money benefit the refined religious atmosphere in the city of Baltimore, then use it in the rustic region of Emmitsburg.

And I've got to tell you, this was not my idea either of where I thought I should build a religious community.

But I didn't argue with God this time.

I mean, just the thought that I was going to be part of a religious community, wow, can you believe it?

And that's not all.

DuBourg confirmed that he wanted me to be the Mother Superior.

I was beside myself.

This was like a dream.

But Bishop Carroll was skeptical about me heading the community.

He wasn't sure how I could swing being a spiritual mother to Sisters and a real mother to my children.

But he allowed it to take place anyway.

And to become the spiritual mother meant that I would have to take vows.

So, in March of 1809, I found myself before Bishop Carroll pronouncing vows of chastity and obedience.

That's right, I had become a religious Sister and the Mother Superior of my own community.

Wow!

How about that?

Now, about those vows, I refused to take a vow of poverty because you know, I still have five children to support.

But anyway, on June 21, 1809, only a year since I got to Baltimore, I, my children, and six new Sisters started off for our journey into the woods of Maryland.

But before we set off, we donned our new habits that I designed.

It really wasn't much more than what I had already been wearing as a widow.

It consisted of a black dress with a shoulder cape, set off by a simple white cap with a black band tied under the chin.

As I left Baltimore behind me, I was now sure that what I wanted was what God wanted, too.

And by the way, just in time, Harriet and Cecilia, as sick as she was, joined us for the journey.

When we got to the site in Emmitsburg, Father John Dubois let us use a cabin which was halfway up the mountainside.

Then we moved off the mountain into what was called St. Joseph's Valley.

We built our residence and called it St. Joseph's House.

We started a free school for poor girls and called it St. Joseph's Free School.

And what do you think I named my community?

That's right.

We were called the Sisters of St. Joseph's.

But notice we weren't called the nuns of St. Joseph's because technically the word nun usually refers to a cloistered woman who is a religious that lives behind walls and has no contact with the public.

Anyway, after we got settled, we had one tragedy after another.

First, in December of 1809, out of nowhere, my sister-in-law Harriet got sick and died of brain fever.

And then in April of 1810, her sister Cecilia finally succumbed to tuberculosis.

Boy, that was tough because Cecilia was ready to take vows.

I would have loved to have seen Cecilia become a religious.

But of course, I'm much happier that the sisters are now with God.

But then in May of 1810 things got better.

Because we needed some income, we established a strictly tuition based school for wealthy girls called St. Joseph's Academy.

And the great thing about this school was that even wealthy Protestant girls could come.

But this school was physically separated from St. Joseph's Free School since tuition paying parents would never have allowed their daughters to be taught alongside poor children.

And I know we were now focusing on wealthy girls much more than the poor.

So, yes, unfortunately our community was not serving the poor the way Samuel Cooper's money had intended.

And yes, he was very distressed with the outcome, but there was nothing we could do.

We needed to focus on wealthy girls and get their tuition.

And in order to pay tuition, families didn't just pay us in money, sometimes they paid in horses and sometimes we were paid in slaves.

So, yeah, we had slaves.

Now, at some point we needed to select what rules our community was to follow.

Now, if you didn't know the goal of religious life is to contemplate God and achieve Christian perfection, but in order to accomplish these goals, community members must follow a set of rules.

Now, since 1809, we were already following a set of provisional rules written by Father Dubois.

But since our directors were French Sulpician priests, they wanted us now to adopt the rules of a French community called the Daughters of Charity, which was established in 1633, in France, by a French priest, Vincent de Paul, and a sister named Louise de Marillac.

Remember Sister Louise de Marillac?

So, little by little we were also beginning to call ourselves Sisters of Charity.

And by January of 1812 we agreed to adopt the Daughters of Charity rules.

But we had to make a few minor alterations that said that even though I was a Mother Superior, I could also continue to be a legal guardian to my own five children.

So, we adopted the rules and in July of 1813, all the Sisters and I took vows for the first time under the new name of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph's.

[BELL] OK, so let's recap the positives.

We built a big new community house.

Our rules and my order were officially established.

Our free school was underway, our tuition school was underway, and my boys went to nearby St Mary's School.

So, my whole family was living around me again.

So, my whole family was living around me again.

Not too bad, right?

But, now let's talk about the negatives.. Now, way back in 1809 while my 14 year old daughter Anna was visiting some friends in Baltimore, she fell in love with a rich boy named Charles, whose family owned a plantation in the West Indies.

So, you know, if Anna was going to be married, sure, I was sad to lose her, but I thought her choice was good, since at least she seemed to love Charles.

And certainly his wealth would take care of her.

But Charles ended up marrying someone else and that crushed my daughter.

So Anna decided to come back to Emmitsburg and become a Sister in our community.

And to say the least, that certainly was a positive.

But the negative came when Anna started showing signs of the Seton curse.

Of course, during her illness, even though I prayed for God's will, I also tried to help out God a little by taking Anna to a doctor and getting the best medical treatment for her.

But these treatments had no effect.

And as she got worse, I tried to be cool and resigned.

And while others said that my piousness and resigned attitude were examples of great spirituality, my superior Father Dubois, felt I was faking it.

I don't know.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe I was a faker.

I certainly was a sinner that I know.

Anyway, the tuberculosis was brutal.

It completely wasted away Anna's body.

I mean, her bones were literally popping out of her skin.

And on March 12, 1812, after receiving her last Communion, Anna, my firstborn, my angel died.

Was I devastated.

I tried to show everyone around me that I was comfortable and accepting of God's will.

But in reality, I was a basket case.

And by not letting out my grief, I dove headfirst into a major depression.

But good thing, Dubois assigned me a new spiritual advisor, and it was this person who saved me from a nervous breakdown.

His name was Father Bruté.

Now, let me talk to you about two important things that are needed in every religious community: the first thing needed is an advisor, and the second thing is a set of rules.

Let's talk about The Rule first.

Remember The Rule we adopted and how we said that rule would help us to contemplate God and achieve Christian perfection?

Right?

Now, how does The Rule help you to do that?

Well, the first thing is that The Rule will help you remove worldly distractions like money.

That's why we have a vow of poverty, because you can't become like Christ if you're worried about how much money is in your bank account.

The Rule will also help to keep order in the community by laying out the simple day-to-day activities like: when to get up, when to go to Mass, when to eat breakfast, when to go to work.

And like I said, all this is spelled out so that you can focus on God.

Now, this doesn't mean that if The Rule is followed, there will always be utopia at the community.

No way.

We're only human.

Certain events will distract us from focusing on God.

For example, let's say there's not enough food and you're hungry, or there's not enough heat in the winter and you're cold, or that the children at the school are misbehaving.

Those things can distract you.

Or let's say your daughter suffers from a horrible disease.

Where right in front of your eyes, she completely wastes away to nothing and that she's in excruciating pain and she dies in your arms.

How about that?

Do you think an event like that can throw you into a major depression and distract you from God?

Sure, you pray to God for answers in how to deal with your situation, but what happens when depression clouds your mind into believing that God is ignoring you?

You just can't stay depressed and lie in your bed all day.

And this is what The Rule is for.

While you're in this depressed state, you just let The Rule carry you.

But what does that mean?

it means you don't have to think just mechanically go through The Rule.

You know, get up at the right time, pray when you're supposed to attend to the needs of the children at school, but don't focus on trying to bring yourself out of this depression.

Just focus on sticking to The Rule and lose yourself in the rhythm of the day, and this depression will pass.

Of course, there is one other ingredient: every religious community needs a spiritual advisor.

Now, an advisor is like a therapist.

But instead of tending to your physical needs, the advisor tends to your spiritual needs.

Okay, so what are spiritual needs?

Well, you know when you say that you need to find purpose in your life?

Well, that's a spiritual need because if a person feels like their life doesn't have any purpose, some will get depressed and some might even want to commit suicide.

Well, a spiritual advisor will help you figure out what your purpose in life is.

And once you feel like you know what your purpose is, you'll feel like you have value, and having value will give you hope.

And it's hope that lifts you out of your depression.

I'm telling you, you need a spiritual advisor to talk to.

You can't simply listen to the voice inside your head.

Now, I was very lucky.

I've had many spiritual advisors in my life.

I would say that my father was my first spiritual advisor.

He certainly showed me how serious one must be in tending to your vocation, especially when that includes tending to the poor.

Like I said before, Rebecca, my sister-in-law and soul mate, she became a great spiritual advisor for me, certainly John Hobart was another important spiritual advisor.

Then the Filicchis both Filippo and Antonio, then Bishop Carroll and Father Cheverus.

There was Father Babade.

And then after Anna's death, Bruté became my advisor.

And by making me feel I had value, Bruté gave me hope and rescued me from a nervous breakdown.

Okay, so how did Bruté do it?

Well, one technique he used with me was that he took two Bibles and we would do spiritual reading, which is where you read the Scriptures.

Then you contemplate on what you've read by writing down your thoughts into the Bible.

Then I would give that Bible to him to read.

Meanwhile, he gave me the other Bible so that I could write down my next day's thoughts.

And then he and I would discuss his interpretation of my thoughts.

His other technique was that I wasn't the only one looking for advice.

He would ask me for my advice too.

And that made me feel like I had purpose.

I mean, he made it so that I wasn't focusing on myself.

And now that I was thinking less about myself, I could focus on God more.

The last great thing about Bruté is that we were both obsessed by the same things; we were always thinking about how we can be more like Jesus.

And one of the ways is by sanctifying yourself.

Sanctification means working at focusing on God and crushing your sinning and self-interest.

Also, Bruté and I loved devotional imagery.

Like remember that painting at Santa Maria Novella The Descent from the Cross?

While some people saw that art as propaganda, Bruté and I would see paintings like that as useful in reminding people of just how much God loved us.

So being of like mind, our thoughts just fed off of each other.

You know, to speak to someone who is on the same page as you, it's synergistic.

It's really a rush.

Father Bruté also did one other important thing for me.

You see, for many years, I had developed this stern idea that I had to be completely detached from this world.

[CHAIN BREAK] And Bruté would remind me that even though our reward comes after death, we should not refuse to live and appreciate our present life.

So thank you, God, for Father Bruté.

because of him, I was on my way to healing and at the same time I was changing.

In fact, you want to know how I've changed over the years with the help of my advisors Remember I was supposed to have a girls' school in Manhattan that Hobart warned people that I would try to proselytize their children.

Well, if that school had actually happened, I think Hobart was right.

I would have tried to convert all those pupils to Catholicism, but now I would never do that.

Even though we taught Protestant kids at St Joseph's Academy, my focus wasn't to convert them.

Now I just wanted to create a place where the children were loved and being well-educated.

In fact, let me talk about the education these kids got.

Now, having had an excellent education and being a mother myself, I knew exactly what these kids needed to learn, and one of the first things was discipline.

Let's face it, if you can't discipline children, they won't listen to you and you won't be able to teach them.

So the trick was the more bad the behavior, the more attention they got from the Sisters.

But even with the extra attention, some girls just couldn't be disciplined and so they needed to be sent home.

There was no other way to do it.

Also, discipline was very efficiently planned.

This included taking notes on a student's daily achievement.

Then we would give out medals and good points for positive behavior, but we also passed out bad points for bad behavior, and then we reported all this to the parents.

But you know, you must be very careful, especially when talking to American parents about the faults of their children.

Many will see it as an attack on themselves, and at that point, nothing will change in the behavior of their kids.

The other trick was to get the kids used to a daily schedule.

Here was ours: 5:45 AM, the Sisters got the kids out of bed.

6:15, there were prayers then Mass.

At 7:30, we had breakfast, and by 8 AM, they were in class.

We had, of course, religious instruction as well as reading, spelling, grammar, geography, math, music, needlework and languages.

Then at 11:30 we said the rosary.

At 12 we had lunch during which we read portions of the Bible.

Then after that we had recreation.

You know, whenever the girls went outside, say, for a walk, they had to be attended by two Sisters; one walking ahead to prevent too fast a pace, while the other following behind to round up the stragglers.

Now, that's nothing that any of us hasn't already seen in nature.

Right?

Then after recreation, we read parts of the book The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.

Remember I was reading that book?

This is a book written in the 1400s where the main message is that to be like Christ, Christians must shut out the world of temptations by denying themselves.

Anyway, the rest of the day we had the same schedule.

Then at 7 PM we had supper.

And during supper, again, we would read from a book.

like Father Scupoli's 16th century book, The Spiritual Combat.

Now, this is an interesting book because it's a nuts and bolts manual of how you should live your life in order to attain the highest point of spiritual perfection.

You know, these books that we were reading were the three most widely read spiritual books in the world.

I tell you, this reading list is essential for everyone.

Anyway, then after supper, the younger kids went right to bed.

But before the older kids went to bed, first, they did spiritual reading.

And so this schedule went on every day until their parents took them away for summer vacation.

So why is this schedule good for kids?

Well, three reasons.

First of all, kids need a routine.

Now, remember this: a kid's mind is everywhere and nowhere, and schedules allow them to focus and when they focus, they can learn.

Also, schedules bring calm.

Like I said before, on the days you don't feel quite positive, you don't have to think.

You just let the schedule carry you.

The third reason why this schedule was good is because it required the constant presence of our Sisters.

Do you realize how valuable it is for a child to be exposed to these pious, educated role models whose only purpose in life is to teach from love and not monetary gain?

So growing up at St Joseph's, these kids were exposed to strong values that they could now pass on to their own children.

So with a combination of discipline, schedule and role models, these girls got an excellent education, if I say so myself.

And because we were doing some really good work, in 1814, our Emmitsburg community was asked to send out a branch to help the poor orphans in Philadelphia.

And then we were called on again in 1817 to send a branch out to my old neighborhood in New York City.

Yes, I was very proud of my community.

And then finally on January 4th, 1821 tuberculosis had claimed the life of yet another Seton.

Me.

[TAPE REWIND] You know, looking back on my life, if someone had asked me if there was anything that I had regretted, I would say that my only regret is that I was not born a man as I could have been a priest and thus serve God better.

Now why do I say serve God better?

Because, let's face it, a priest and not a Sister is a direct representative of God himself.

Not only can a priest absolve others of their sins, but he can turn plain bread into the actual flesh of Jesus.

Wow.

I can only wish to be able to do that.

Unfortunately, women in the Catholic Church do not have that favor bestowed on them.

And why is that?

Why shouldn't women be in the pulpit preaching like a man?

Speaking of the pulpit, remember Father Bruté?

Because of his very poor English, I used to help him write his sermons.

In fact, I would write practically his whole speech.

Here's an excerpt: Cover yourself in prayers and communions with his precious blood as a little birds when they see the rising storm and coming rain, they dip into the ocean.

And as the saint who said, Strike, strike, indeed.'

But where can you find a place, my Jesus, not covered with your own blood?

So I was so excited about writing Bruté's sermons?

Why do you think?

Because then these became kind of a way to give my own sermon as if I was the priest.

Which I'd like to remind you I would have been able to do if I was born a man.

Because if I was a man, I would definitely have become a priest, and then I would have been allowed to speak from the pulpit.

But being a woman, I'm not allowed to speak.

You know, I tell you, it's incredibly frustrating.

I really wonder sometimes about the men that run the Catholic Church and their attitude toward women.

I mean, who gave birth to Jesus?

It could only be a woman.

Who funded his mission?

It was wealthy women: Mary, Joanna, Susanna and many others.

Who pushed Jesus to do his first miracle at the wedding at Cana?

A woman.

And who did Jesus appear to first after he rose from the dead?

Women.

If the hierarchy of the church knows that women's voices are so important, why stifle them at the pulpit?

Anyway, at some point, sad to say, Bruté had to leave Emmitsburg and in his place he was replaced by Father Hickey.

But Hickey couldn't hold a candle to Bruté.

First of all, Hickey was hygienically a very sloppy priest.

He must not have been very fond of bathing because let's put it this way when he lifted his arms in gesticulation, it was distracting, to say the least.

But more problematic, he was very sloppy at the pulpit.

For instance, during one sermon, he obviously didn't prepare for it.

So with my thoughts on what I would do if I were a priest, I let him have it.

I couldn't help it.

In fact, this is what I said to him about his sloppy sermon.

Oh, sir, that awakens my anger.

Do you remember a priest holds the honor of God on his lips?

Do you not trouble yourself to spread his fire He wishes so much enkindled?

If you will not study and prepare when young, what will you do when you are old?

Do I sound frustrated?

Well, I was.

I'm telling you, my life was not of my liking.

My world should have been on fire.

I should have been the one able to baptize thousands and snatch poor victims from hell.

But all I could do was school and rules and give opinions.

And sometimes that made me feel impotent.

Look, to serve God in any capacity should be everyone's vocation.

But to be allowed to act as his representative and plead for him and continue to be the instrument in calling home wandering souls, bears no comparison to any other vocation.

But that I couldn't do simply because I wasn't a man.

Ridiculous, isn't it?

And you want to hear a bigger irony?

If I had been alive right now in the 21st Century and I had stayed an Episcopalian, I could have become a priest.

How about that?

OK, Elizabeth, calm down.

Remember, it's not what you want.

It's what God wants.

Okay, one last thing before I go.

Let me take you quickly through how the Church made me into a saint.

I died in 1821.

Right?

Now here's a rule to remember: You can pray to any dead person you want.

For instance, you can pray to a dead relative to help you.

They don't have to be recognized by the Church as anyone special.

And that's what happened with me.

More than 100 years after my death, in the 1930s and then again in the 1950s, people had prayed to me.

I was nobody special at the time, but they prayed to me anyway, and those prayers evidently cured two people.

So in 1959, after looking carefully into my past, the Church concluded that I had lived a very pious life and therefore they deemed me venerable, meaning my memory should be given a great deal of respect.

Then in 1961 the Church investigated the two cures and deemed that they were miracles.

And so in 1963 those two miracles, plus having venerable status now allowed me to become beatified.

Check out this news footage of my beatification from 1963.

Look at this shot of the Pope bowing to my image.

I certainly don't deserve that honor.

But get this, I'm not only proud to be the first American born person to be beatified and declared a saint, but I'm proud to be part of the first congregation of religious Sisters founded in the United States.

But anyway, let me get back to the story.

Then later that year in 1963, people had once again prayed to me and those prayers cured a third person.

Now if there had been a fourth miracle, I would have been declared a saint.

Well, in 1975 the Church waived the requirement of a fourth miracle for me and decided to declare me a saint anyway.

By the way, after 1983 the requirements changed so the rule now is venerable, plus one miracle equals beatified, and beatified plus one miracle equals saint.

Okay, that's all very nice, but what does being a saint really mean?

Well, it doesn't really mean anything to me because I'm dead already, but hopefully it means something to you.

Hopefully, it's a reminder that some people who lived were very pious.

It doesn't mean they lived a perfect life.

But it means that they got to the point where eventually they lived with such a high degree of love for God that the Catholic Church feels that they are examples for others to emulate.

Remember those paintings I was talking about that Bruté and I said helped remind people about God?

Well, that's what a saint is for, because by becoming a saint, if I can remind you through my life, to live your life like Jesus and love God and love one another, well, what can be more beautiful than that?

Funding for the the American Women Saints Series on Elizabeth Ann Seton and Frances Xavier Cabrini was provided by: the Catholic Communication Campaign the Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton Foundation Additional funding was provided by the following: For more information or to order a copy of this program visit www.BongiornoProductions.com