Two American Saints

Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821) was an American educator and a Catholic leader. She was born in New York and raised as an Episcopalian. She married William Seton and had five children. In 1805, she became Catholic. She later opened the first Catholic school for girls in the United States in Emmitsburg, Maryland. She also started the Sisters of Charity, the first religious community for women in the country.

Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first person born in the United States to be declared a saint by the Catholic Church.  Her feast day is celebrated on Jan. 4.

John Nepomucene Neumann CSsR (March 28, 1811 – January 5, 1860) was a Bohemian-born American prelate of the Catholic Church.

An immigrant from Bohemia, he came to the United States in 1836, where he was ordained, joined the Redemptorist order, and became the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia in 1852. In Philadelphia, Neumann founded the first Catholic diocesan school system in the US. Canonized in 1977, he is the only male US citizen to be named a saint. Her feast day is celebrated on Jan. 5.