Walk around the corner from Northbrook Road to Baggot Street in Dublin. At first all you notice are the Georgian houses with the brightly painted doors. Then take a second look. The sign beside the yellow door on Northbrook Road says Seton House. In front of the house on Baggot Street is a statue of Mother Catherine McAuley with a young girl.

Walk down Baltimore Street in Baltimore from St. Martin's to St. Peter's. The sign at St. Martin's says, "Served by the Daughters of Charity." The sign in front of the teacup in the living room at St. Peter's says, "The sisters are tired; be sure they have a comfortable cup of tea when I am gone." It was a constant reminder which Catherine McAuley gave her sisters.

Walk from West Washington Place to Mott Street in New York. The first mother house of the Sisters of Mercy in the United States was a short distance from the Sisters of Charity at Old St. Patrick's on Mott Street.

Two women, Elizabeth Seton in Baltimore, and Catherine McAuley in Dublin, seeking to know God's will. Two communities, the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy connected by more than physical proximity in Dublin, Baltimore, and New York. When Elizabeth Seton founded the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg in 1809, she opened an academy to educate young girls. At the same time she welcomed girls of the neighborhood to her school.

On Sundays the sisters taught catechism to the African-American children who gathered after vespers at Mt. St. Mary's. They were pioneers. In Dublin in the 1820s when Catherine McAuley established the House of Mercy women who lived in community, but were not cloistered were unknown. Much controversy accompanied the "walking nuns" on their rounds to visit the poor and care for them. In 1831, the Archbishop of Dublin encouraged Catherine to put her group on a more permanent footing. He obtained permission from Rome for the sisters to continue their work among the poor, even if they made solemn vows. With that promise Catherine and her companions made perpetual vows on

December 12, 1831. The community quickly spread throughout Ireland and in May 1846 the first Sisters of Mercy arrived in New York at the invitation of Archbishop John Hughes. On October 11 of that year, a postulant presented herself for admission. Like the foundress, she was Catherine. Her last name was Seton.

A few weeks after Elizabeth Seton's death in 1821, Catherine wrote to her mother's friend, Julia Scott, in Philadelphia. "My mind is now tranquil but it cannot bear the remembrance of the too happy past…As for my own health, it is tolerable good…But as life is so short, it cannot be very long ere I shall see through the Mercy of God, (and) be reunited to her who will restore happiness to my heart."(1.)

Perhaps it was this conviction that she would join her sisters and her mother in an early death that deterred Catherine from making a firm decision about her life. Her brother, Richard's, death in 1823 may have reinforced her conviction. She spent many years traveling at home and abroad.

Finally she returned to the city of her birth to begin a new life. For several years she had, under the direction of Archbishops John DuBois and John Hughes, engaged in works of charity. Now she wanted to channel them by joining a religious community. Undecided about joining either the Sisters of Charity or the Madames of the Sacred Heart, she accepted Hughes' advice to await the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy before making a decision. At the age of 46 she presented herself as a postulant with the Sisters of Mercy. Very early in her community life she began the ministry which characterized the rest of her long life. She began to visit the prisoners in the Tombs, at Sing Sing and on Blackwell Island. She helped the men learn job skills, provided help and counsel when they were released and it was through her influence that many of the condemned were saved from execution. Those she could not save, she prepared for death. All over New York she was welcomed as the prison sister.

Fluent in French and Italian, she studied Spanish and German to be of greater service to the men she served.

Her example is a model to her successors who work today in prison ministry. Often they must learn new languages to better serve. Not just a second language but the language of the courts and the system to be better able to help the incarcerated. When Mother Catherine Seton died in 1891, she left a legacy of service. Her ties to the Sisters of Charity of New York brought joy to her and strengthened the bonds between the two communities.

Today, the heirs of Catherine McAuley and Elizabeth Seton are engaged in prison ministry from New York to California. As with Catherine Seton, they visit the incarcerated, advocate for the unjustly imprisoned, run education programs, provide spiritual counsel and help those who are released in making the transition to the outside. They are walking in the footsteps of their founders.

Sister Eleanor Casey, D.C.
Emmitsburg Province