Religion: Holy Candidate

In the odor of sanctity 110 years ago died Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Bayley (“Mother”) Seton. Born in 1774 into an aristocratic Anglican family of New York, she married William Magee Seton, shipping merchant, bore him five children. Not for long was her married life happy: financial misfortune and illness came to her husband and in 1803 she took him, ailing with tuberculosis, to Leghorn, Italy. He died in a few weeks and thereafter her faith, already strong, turned increasingly toward Catholicism. She returned to the U. S. and despite family opposition embraced the faith in 1805. She wished to join with Catholic friends in conducting a school in Manhattan, but anti-Catholic feeling was strong there. Her clerical advisers suggested that she go to Baltimore, and there in 1808 she opened her school. She prayed that she might open a free institution, soon found a benefactor, one Samuel Cooper. Hers was the first free parochial school in the U. S.

Humble, increasingly ascetic, Mother Seton found a religious community spontaneously growing up about her. Soon a community house was built for her near Emmitsburg, Md. Impatient to enter it, she walked there from Baltimore with her Sisters: 50 miles in two days. Her group followed the rule of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul—poverty, chastity, obedience, service of the poor—but they were not incorporated with the parent order until 29 years after her death.

No spectacular tortures, holy stigmata or supernatural visions marked the life of Mother Seton; but she was gentle and pious, and as brilliant an organizer as St. Teresa who founded the Discalced Carmelite Order. One of her biographers (Father Joseph B. Code of St. Ambrose College, Davenport, Iowa) says that she “inaugurated practically every work of Catholic social welfare in the U. S.” Soon after her death U. S. Catholics perceived in her an eminent candidate for the Church’s great posthumous tribute: sainthood. Though eight residents of North America have been canonized (TIME, April 7; July 7, 1930), there are as yet no native-born U. S. saints. In 1880 the late great James Cardinal Gibbons, then Archbishop of Baltimore, began the movement to have Mother Seton canonized; his successor Archbishop Michael Joseph Curley continued it. In 1911 the first petition was sent to Rome. Since then the case has not been perceptibly advanced.

To the Vatican to see Pope Pius XI last week went 50 pilgrims—ladies all in black, including Mrs. Philip A. Brennan, president of the International Federation of Catholic Alumnae; Mrs. James J. Sheeran, its co-founder and president of the Seton Committee; and gentlemen in tailcoats and black ties, including Biographer Father Code. A dozen similar audiences were to follow. To lend ecclesiastical prestige came Mother-General Marie LeBrun of the Sisters of Charity of Paris, Cardinals Donatus Sbarretti and Bonaventure Cerretti, Bishop John Joseph McMahon of Trenton, N. J. and Rev. Giuseppe Scognamillo of Rome, postulator (advocate) of Mother Seton. In the Papal throne-room they genuflected, presented to His Holiness a petition in 29 volumes, by 150,000 of the U. S. faithful. Cordially, briefly, His Holiness addressed the pilgrims in Italian, thanked them for coming so far on such a pious mission. But he made no direct reference to Mother Seton. Reason: until the case has been fully investigated he can assume no obligation concerning it.

Slowly, cautiously goes beatification, prelude to canonization. There are 20 steps to be taken, and in Mother Seton’s case the exhaustive investigation of her life is not yet finished.