Searching for Mother Seton's Bones

A friend of mine told me that if I was ever down near Battery Park and wanted a break from the bustle of the street, all I had to do was head to 7 State St. There I would find peaceful sanctuary in a building known as the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary. Recently I was heading down that way and figured I'd go check the church out.

I wasn't in it just for the spirituality. I had also heard that St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was buried there, and that in some hidden corner of the church there was a tomb with her skeletal remains visible. On the subway I tried to remember when I first had heard that rumor. It might have been in some long-forgotten Bronx classroom when I attended Catholic school.

Our Lady of the Rosary looks nothing like a church. Standing on the sidewalk in the sweltering heat, I gaped up at the small red brick edifice. I read a brass plaque that let me know that the church, once a mansion, was built in 1800 in a Federal style. Elizabeth Ann Seton?better known as Mother Seton?lived there from 1801 to 1803. Her husband died in 1803; Seton converted to Catholicism and left New York for Baltimore to become a nun. She later earned the title Mother and founded the Sisters of Charity. She died a beloved figure in 1821, at the age of 47. As the years passed and the Catholic Church grew in New York, Mother Seton became a legendary figure. In 1975 Pope Paul VI declared her an official saint.

Her old home at 7 State St. became a church in 1885. I walked in and looked around the former mansion. Noontime penitents were on the kneelers chanting the rosary. The leader was a stout Latina who started the prayer and then let the others finish. I sat down in a hard wooden pew, closed my eyes and listened to the constant refrains of "Hail Mary." I almost drifted off as the prayers turned to a soothing lullaby. I shook myself of that lassitude, got up and went about my original mission of finding the bones of Mother Seton.

I slinked to the back of the church as a young man was blessing himself with holy water. As he turned to leave I asked if he knew if in fact Mother Seton's bones were somewhere in the building. He stifled a cough and said he didn't know. Then he told me that beneath the main chapel there was something known as St. Brigid's Crypt. He said he wasn't sure what was in that, and left.

I stepped around white wooden columns and tried not to disturb anyone. This was a place of serious prayer and reflection. I went to the side of the church and saw a small room full of green plants and red votive candles. In the middle of this was a brass statue of Mother Seton with her arm around a small child. I looked behind the statue but there was nothing there but a wall. A beautiful young blonde woman in a tight skirt knelt before the statue and covered her face with her hands. I watched her gorgeous form and realized that for such a repressed religion I have had a lot of sexual thoughts in Catholic churches. There is something erotic about a woman in prayer.

I walked by the confessional booths and knelt at the altar, looking for crypts or bones. I found nothing. On the way out I saw a portly man in the reception area doing some clerical work. A tourist stopped and asked him if the gift store outside would open soon.

"That place has been closed for eight years," he said and turned his back. The tourist stammered and then walked away, shaking his head. I entered the office and tried to get the man's attention. I wanted to know if Mother Seton or even St. Brigid was buried here. He looked over his shoulder at me and saw another annoying question coming his way, so he walked off and opened a door near him and closed it. I stood waiting for a while, but he never came back. I walked out of the church and into the bright sunlight thinking of bones.