Ann Teresa O’Neill, whose confirmed miracle led to the canonization of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, dies at 78

Generations of Catholics came to know Ann Teresa O’Neill as the child whose miraculous cure from acute lymphatic leukemia in 1952 helped lead to the canonization of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint.

Joseph Hooe, who attends Mass regularly at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore, knew O’Neill simply as “Mom.”

“She was wonderful,” Hooe said, with emotion. “She taught us right from wrong. She taught us how to be good people and the importance of faith and compassion.”

O’Neill, a 78-year-old Easton resident, died in the early hours of July 17 surrounded by her family, Hooe said. She had suffered a stroke a few days prior and was making progress before her health declined again.

“She had a very graceful death,” Hooe said, noting that he and his two of his three siblings, Gerrard Hooe and Mary Alice Zawodny, were with her and prayed the “Hail Mary” together. The third sibling, Robert Eugene Hooe, died in the 1990s.

“I feel certain my mother is in heaven,” he said, pointing to two signs he believes he received afterward. The first was “the loudest clap of thunder I ever heard in my life” at the exact time his mother died the following day, July 18. The second was the discovery that same day of a yellow rose, a symbol of the Virgin Mary, in the parking lot of the garage where he worked.

“It’s amazing how these things happen and are signs,” Hooe said.

Born Oct. 7, 1947, in Baltimore, O’Neill was the daughter of the late William Richard O’Neill and the late Felixena Phelps O’Neill. When she was 4, she was diagnosed with leukemia and her health deteriorated quickly. In a 2025 interview, O’Neill said her mother, Felixena O’Neill, started to pray for the intercession of her late mother and the saints.

“This is what my mother said to her mother: ‘Get to the saints. Mother, get to the saints,” O’Neill said, noting that it was Daughter of Charity Sister Mary Alice Fowler who told her mother about Mother Seton.

“When (my mother) found out Mother Seton was in Emmitsburg, my father put me on a crib mattress in a station wagon and drove up (there) from Baltimore,” O’Neill said in the interview. Once there, they laid her on Mother Seton’s tomb and then took her to the room where Mother Seton died. Within days, the young girl’s health began to improve and after several bone marrow tests throughout the years, she was deemed cancer-free. 

“She became one of the miracles of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton,” said Rob Judge, executive director of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. “We got to know her personally. She and her children grew up around the sisters. She became a friend to us.”

O’Neill attended daily Mass at Ss.Peter and Paul in Easton and other area parishes. Though she lived on the Eastern Shore, O’Neill visited the Daughters of Charity in Emmitsburg several times each year, Judge said.

“She had a deep faith. She loved her family,” Judge said. “She was very kind to people. An amazing person who happened to be the miracle.”

Daughter of Charity Sister Betty Ann McNeil was well familiar with O’Neill’s story  while growing up. She had the pleasure of meeting O’Neill and getting to know her after she became a religious sister.

“She was a woman of great faith, an active, practicing Catholic,” Sister Betty Ann said. “She very much reached out to others to let them know God loved them very much.”

She noted that O’Neill had her struggles, including a divorce and the death of her son, but never lost her faith.

“She was very, very close to the Daughters of Charity,” she said. “She never forgot her gift of good health resulting from the miracle.”

Hooe said the Daughters of Charity had “really rallied around” the family since his mother’s passing, even allowing her to be buried in their cemetery in Emmitsburg.

“It was very generous of them to accept our mother as one of their own,” Hooe said.

Along with the sisters providing the family with a plot in their cemetery, the family also received special permission from Archbishop William E. Lori to have O’Neill’s funeral at the shrine, Judge said.

“It is so unique,” Judge said. “It is such a privilege to be included in laying her to rest. She was a great friend. It is an honor for us.”

Archbishop William E. Lori will preside over a funeral Mass for Ann Teresa O’Neill July 25 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, 339 S. Seton Ave., Emmitsburg, at 11 a.m. Interment will follow on the grounds of the national shrine.

Email Katie V. Jones at kjones@CatholicReview.org

Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information at 8 p.m. on July 23, 2026. For full coverage of the funeral Mass, click here.

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