A Resounding Yes!

·S2 E35

The Widow Who Became America's First Native-Born Saint

September 4
48 mins

Episode Description

Belle Meade sits down with Sister Betty Ann McNeil, D.C., a Daughter of Charity and former provincial archivist who edited the second edition of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton: A Spiritual Portrait. Sister Betty Ann has been telling Elizabeth Seton's story for fifty years, since winning a place as one of the youngest Daughters of Charity sent to Rome for the canonization in 1975.

What We Talk About:

  • How a biography read at twelve set Sister Betty Ann on the path to the Daughters of Charity, and how she came to be in Rome for the canonization
  • What happened to St. Elizabeth Seton in Italy: the month quarantined in a stone building with no window panes, her husband's death two months later, and the widow left in a country where she didn't speak the language
  • The moment in a Florence church when an Englishman leaned over during Mass and told her what Catholics call the real presence
  • Why Sister Betty Ann went back through the first edition and verified every quotation against St. Elizabeth Seton's own writings, and what she added for readers who want to check the sources themselves
  • The painting of Jesus taken down from the cross and laid in Mary's arms that a grieving young widow could not get out of her mind

Resources Mentioned:

Chapters:

  • 00:00: Introduction
  • 03:20: Losing her father, and meeting the Daughters of Charity
  • 05:40: Winning the lottery to attend the canonization in Rome
  • 08:02: A socialite on Wall Street, and the business that collapsed
  • 10:15: Sailing to Italy, and quarantined at the Lazaretto
  • 14:21: "That's what they call their real presence"
  • 16:59: Home to New York with a Catholic heart
  • 21:14: Emmitsburg, and the founding of the American Sisters of Charity
  • 22:56: Fifty years since the canonization
  • 26:58: Why the book needed a second edition
  • 36:10: The painting in Florence that gripped her
  • 42:19: How Elizabeth Seton shaped her own choices

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

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