EMMITSBURG, Md. – Remembering her joyful faith journey and reminding congregants of her miraculous healing by Mother Seton, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore celebrated the funeral Mass of Ann Theresa O’Neill on a mild and sunny Saturday, July 25, in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
About 200 people, including several Daughters of Charity, attended the 11 a.m. Mass of Resurrection at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton.
O’Neill, a Baltimore native, whose extraordinary healing as a child contributed to the canonization of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was a longtime SS. Peter and Paul parishioner in Easton, Maryland. She died at the age of 78 on July 17.
Archbishop Lori offered “a word of condolence” to O’Neill’s family as the Mass began. Before the final commendation, he said, “I just want to say what a privilege it is to celebrate Ann’s funeral.”
“So many years ago, she was befriended by Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton by her intercession, and she was deeply blessed by the prayers of that saint, and, in the years subsequent to that, she has been a great blessing to all of us,” he said.
Archbishop Lori said he would see O’Neill at various Masses and prayer services in western Maryland, “and just to be near her I always thought was a great privilege: the person who experienced through the prayers of Mother Seton the cure that Christ and the Holy Spirit effected in her and caused the first native-born American saint to be canonized. What a beautiful thing this is.”
O’Neill’s miraculous healing was detailed in a lengthy feature article in The Dialog in August 2025.
She defied medical expectations and was healed in 1952 when she was only four years old from acute lymphatic leukemia, an always-fatal disease in those days. She recalled the dreadful chicken pox that compounded her predicted fatal suffering, the desperate yet hopeful trip to Emmitsburg, the prayers in the room where Mother Seton died, and the dreaded and painful bone marrow testings to verify her cure.
At 15, she attended Mother Seton’s beatification ceremony over which Pope John XXIII presided on March 17, 1963.
She was a 27-year-old mother of four when she witnessed the canonization of Mother Seton on Sept. 14, 1975, over which Pope Paul VI presided. The 50th anniversary of the canonization was celebrated last year.
O’Neil downplayed her role, giving credit to her mother’s faith and Mother Seton’s intercession. “We all have miracles all the time,” O’Neill said in an August 2025 interview. “Mine just happened to be what they used for the Church. There’s a lot of miracles after me that Mother Seton performed, but they’re not documented.”
As family members and friends gathered in a separate room where O’Neill’s body lay in state below a portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Sister Anne Marie fought back tears as she shared how much her friend Ann meant to her. She said about 100 fellow sisters at a recent provincial gathering consented to O’Neill’s burial in the convent’s cemetery.
O’Neill’s daughter Alice Marie Zawodny is named for Sister Mary Alice Fowler, who played a pivotal role in encouraging the O’Neill family to seek Mother Seton’s intercession. Zawodny said her mother “received the best of care” at the University of Maryland Hospital Center following a stroke six days before her passing.
Nikolas Zawodny sang “Nearer My God to Thee” at his grandmother’s Rite of Committal. Another member of the family wore a black bonnet reminiscent of Mother Seton’s iconic head covering. “Salve Regina,” traditionally sung when a Daughter of Charity was sent out on a mission, was a poignant reminder of O’Neill’s friendship with the nuns, who trace their origins in the U.S. to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.
“It is also sung at every Daughter of Charity funeral, accompanying each sister as she sets out on her final mission – eternity,” the funeral Mass program stated. “Ann was a beloved friend of many Daughters of Charity throughout her life. Together with the Daughters, we now sing this prayer for her.”
Homilist Father Patrick M. Carrion of St. Matthew Parish in Baltimore linked O’Neill’s unique story to those of Mother Seton and the Blessed Mother. He said O’Neill enjoyed God’s favor, “but just because one is favored by God, whether it’s the Blessed Mother or Ann or anyone, … it doesn’t mean you’re immune from life’s difficulties.”
Father Carrion noted that all three mothers had buried a child, but had carried on, “keeping the faith in their trials of life.” He encouraged family members to continue to tell the stories of O’Neill’s life to future generations.
At the conclusion of the Mass, Archbishop Lori recalled a recent flight from St. Louis back to Baltimore. “I think most of the Daughters of Charity in the United States were there (in the waiting area),” he said.
Although the weather and flights “were terrible,” he said, “the one theme that ran throughout the conversation was all about Ann – not only about her passing, but about her life, and about what a good and beautiful person she is. I think, as we commit her to the Lord, we can have every confidence that she has been embraced by Mother Seton in Heaven.”
