I will tell you what is my own great help. I once read or heard that an interior life means but the continuation of our Savior's life within us; that the great object of all His mysteries is to merit for us the grace of His interior life and communicate it to us, it being the end of His mansion to lead us into the sweet land of his promise, a life of constant union with Himself.

At a meeting of the American hierarchy in 1852, Archbishop Kenrick commented, "Elizabeth Seton did more for the church in America than all of us bishops together." Unmistakably, Elizabeth Seton is a seminal character in the history of America's Catholic church. She was the first American saint to be canonized by the Vatican and is foundress of the parochial school system in the United States.

The name Our Lady of the Rosary came from the Irish immigrant mission of the same name started in 1883. The mission assisted over 60,000 Irish young women find shelter and employment in the New World while trying to help them reconnect with their relatives already in America.

We are the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary and the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Our two names distinguish our historic and present legacy to Lower Manhattan. Born in Colonial times as the James Watson House, then the residence of Mother Seton-America's first canonized saint. The parish was also a mission for receiving poor Irish women sent out of Ireland by the British in the 1800's before Ellis Island existed. Today we provide daily worship and Eucharist for commuters from the metropolitan area.