Robert Setonwas an Italian-American Roman Catholic prelate.
Background
He was born on August 28, 1839 in Pisa, Italy. His father was William Seton, a naval officer, son of Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton; his mother, Emily Prime, daughter of Nathaniel Prime, of the historic banking house of Prime, Ward & King. Of noble Scottish and English lineage on his father's side, and connected on his mother's with some of the foremost American families of wealth and social prominence, he possessed a family pride so extravagant at times that it led to eccentricities which made him an enigma even to his coreligionists in America.
His childhood was spent at the Seton home, "Cragdon, " in Westchester County, New York.
Education
At eleven he followed his brother William Seton as a student at Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland. After his mother death in 1854 he traveled on the Continent, studied at several European institutions, and finally made a short visit to America.
He went to Rome in 1857, where he became a student at the Urban College of the Propaganda until the opening of the North American College in 1859 when he enrolled as its first student. He aroused the interest of Pius IX who in November 1861 had him transferred to the Accademia Ecclesiastica dei Nobili, an institution for the education of nobles studying for the priesthood. He received the degree of bachelor of laws and doctor of divinity.
Career
After a brilliant course of studies, first at the Roman College and afterwards at the Roman University, he was ordained priest, April 16, 1865. The following year the Pope made him a private chamberlain and one year later named him a prothonotary apostolic.
For some unknown reason, however, he decided against a career that would have led possibly to the cardinalate, and elected to return to America. Here for more than a quarter of a century he led a quietly busy life, first as chaplain to the Sisters of Charity, at St. Elizabeth's Convent, near Madison, New Jersey, then as pastor of St. Joseph's Church, Jersey City, giving occasional lectures on his great hobby, Christian archeology, at various American colleges and universities.
Suddenly in 1902 he returned to Rome, where for twelve years he served as the unofficial link between the Vatican and things and people American. The Rome of the Temporal Sovereignty had disappeared, but he found four of his old classmates cardinals, one a patriarch, two archbishops, two canons of the Vatican, and three others high in ecclesiastical circles.
In 1903 he refused the then vacant archbishopric of Chicago, but four months later accepted the mitre in another form when Pius X appointed him titular archbishop of Heliopolis in partibus infidelium.
In 1914, however, financial reverses had so reduced his patrimony that he reappeared among his countrymen as an impoverished old aristocrat, seeking a home on the eve of a great international conflict. He took up his residence at Emmitsburg, near the tomb of Mother Seton, but a longing for Europe drew him back once more, and he spent three years in France, Spain, and England. When he returned to America he lived at the Convent of St. Elizabeth, cared for by the same sisterhood to which he had given his services as a priest shortly after his ordination.
In 1862 he published Essays on Various Subjects Chiefly Roman, and in 1869 he edited many of Mother Seton's writings - Memoirs, Letters, and Journal of Elizabeth Seton. Another of his works was a scholarly genealogical study, An Old Family, or the Setons of Scotland and America (1899). His own memoirs, Memories of Many Years, appeared in 1923. He was also correspondent for the New York Times, under the name Fyvie.
He died in 1927.
Personality
His militant patriotism often getting him into serious difficulties. He was a faithful priest, a distinguished scholar, and had a unique personality.