‘Miracle girl’: Baltimore native's childhood cure from leukemia helped canonize America's first saint

EASTON – It’s been half a century since Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton was declared a saint Sept. 14, 1975, but the woman whose miraculous healing helped lead to the first U.S.-born saint’s canonization doesn’t dwell on the miracle that saved her life when she was a toddler.

“We all have miracles all the time,” Ann Theresa O’Neill said. “Mine just happened to be the one they used for the church. There’s a lot of miracles after me that Mother Seton performed, but they’re not documented.”

Ann O’Neill shares with a visitor the meaning of religious images that fill her home. In the white frame is her mother meeting Pope John XXIII in 1963. (Courtesy Connie Connolly/The Dialog)

At 77, Ann spends much of her time babysitting great-grandchildren. She attends daily Mass at Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Easton or other area parishes and cherishes the friendship of companions, both earthly and heavenly.

Her extraordinary healing as a child is simply the foundation of her ordinary life of faith.

Her cozy, floral-themed townhome in Easton, where the Baltimore native has lived for more than 20 years to be near her only daughter, is filled with evidence of Ann’s devotion to the Holy Family and her favorite saints, to angels and her beloved family.

Her grandson lives with her, as well as her dog, an exuberant Lhasa Apso, Brooks, named after the famed late Baltimore Oriole third baseman.

Both inside and outdoors are many images and figurines of the Holy Family and O’Neill’s heavenly friends – angels, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, among others. She wears the brown scapular of the Carmelites, both a Miraculous Medal and silver ring, and a St. Joseph bracelet.

Reticent to talk about herself, Ann prefers to share stories about her mother’s deep faith and Mother Seton’s beneficence. It was Felixena “Sis” Phelps O’Neill’s confidence in heavenly helpers that buoyed her when other family members gave up hope. Ann calls her cure “my mother’s miracle.”

A fatal diagnosis

Much has been written about Ann’s miraculous healing in 1952 from acute lymphatic leukemia, an always-fatal disease in those days. Ann calls up snippets of memories: 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; the dreaded and painful bone marrow testings to verify her cure.

Ann O’Neill was only four years old when she was diagnosed with then-incurable acute lymphatic leukemia in Baltimore. (Courtesy Ann Theresa O’Neill)

Those recollections are her own, but the faith of Ann’s mother and Mother Seton’s intercession are the bedrock of her grateful wonder.

Although her favorite scrapbook is on display at the Seton Shrine in Emmitsburg for the 50th anniversary of Mother Seton’s canonization, Ann turned the pages of other frayed and yellowed photo albums and books that chronicle the miracle and Mother Seton’s life. It’s as if Ann was a bystander, watching events in her life unfold. She opens a book by Mary Hilaire Tavenner to reveal a chapter devoted to Sis’ account of the miracle.

Born in October 1947, Ann was four-and-a-half years old when Sis noticed the “blood blotches” on her skin in February 1952, as Ann and her younger sister Jeanne were playing. Alarmed, Sis, who was eight months pregnant, and her husband Bill took Ann to the family doctor as soon as possible. A test confirmed her blood count was alarmingly low.

All that night, Sis awoke each hour to pray a novena to the Infant Jesus of Prague. That statue of the Infant of Prague holds an honored place in Ann’s living room today.

Ann was admitted Feb. 17, 1952, to St. Agnes Hospital, administered by the Daughters of Charity, in Baltimore for blood transfusions. Ann was transferred Feb. 28 to University Hospital. Sis was forced to leave her bruised and feverish daughter to deliver the newborn, Mary Margaret, who was then cared for by Sis’ aunt and uncle.

Sis was transferred to University Hospital to be near Ann. It was then “that the doctor told me Ann had leukemia,” Sis told Tavenner. “He also said that it has never been known in medical history that anyone had ever survived leukemia. He told me there was no hope in the world for Ann to live through this.”

Sis turned to the saints – and her own late mother – for help.

In more casual attire, Ann O’Neill poses for a 1963 snapshot in Rome. (Courtesy Ann Theresa O’Neill)

“This is what my mother said to her mother: ‘Get to the saints. Mother, get to the saints.’ And then Mother Seton came in the picture,” Ann said.

But not before another saint set the stage for a miraculous sequence of events.

The sign of the red rose

Ann was declining rapidly. Dr. Milton Sacks, a foremost expert on leukemia, tried a new drug which only made her condition worse. Her parents grew weary of the constant torment Ann was undergoing at the hands of well-meaning research doctors. While her condition was incurable, her suffering prompted her father to lose patience and finally say, “Just stop it.” Ann was discharged as incurable March 27, 1952, but she remained under Dr. Sacks’ care.

“My mother wanted to take me to Lourdes, but they didn’t have the means to do that,” Ann said. But Sis was especially close to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as the Little Flower of Jesus, occasionally sending money to her Carmelite order in France. “So, she was praying to St. Thérèse of the Little Flower to send her the sign of the rose if I was going to get well,” Ann recalled. “She asked for a red rose in her hand, and someone came to her out of the blue with a red rose. She got the sign, and she knew I was going to get well.”

Ann was home only a short time when her condition became so critical that she was rushed back to St. Agnes Hospital, April 9, during Holy Week, where Daughter of Charity Sister Mary Alice Fowler, supervisor of St. Louise Children’s Ward, would play a pivotal role.

According to a report in the Mother Seton Guild Bulletin, Sister Mary Alice said, “Ann Theresa was in a pitiful condition. She was very pale, her face was swollen, she was irritable and so weak that she could neither sit nor stand.” As if things couldn’t get worse, she developed chicken pox – the worst case Dr. Sacks had ever seen.

“I remember itching it. It was horrible. I had chicken pox on top of chicken pox,” Ann said. “But suffering does make you grow.”

Sister Mary Alice Fowler, left, attends Ann O’Neill’s first communion. (Courtesy Ann Theresa O’Neill)

On Good Friday, Ann said her mother asked God to “either make me well or take me. She said, ‘Only you can see what I can’t see. If she would lose her soul, then take her.’ So that kind of makes me feel good. And he did. He made me well.”

On Holy Saturday, Ann was readmitted to St. Agnes Hospital.

On Easter Sunday, Sis’ father visited the family at the hospital, unhappy about his granddaughter’s fatal condition and his daughter’s unrealistic, persistent hope. Later that same evening, Sister Mary Alice stopped by.

“(She) came and told my mother about Mother Seton,” Ann said. “And Sister Mary Alice said, ‘You have to have faith,’ and my mom says, ‘I have all the faith.’ And so, then she went around to relatives who all thought she was goofy.”

Sister Mary Alice and Sis enlisted the prayers of the Daughters of Charity, area priests, Catholic students, family members and parish faithful who all began a “Crusade of Prayer” novena on behalf of Ann. Sis appealed to the Blessed Mother “as one mother to another … surely she understood my suffering as I tried to reflect upon hers,” she recalled.

After Easter, Ann seemed to get a little stronger and could even stand. Her parents sought permission to make a pilgrimage. They had nothing to lose.

“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,” Ann said.

Father Charles Stouter met the family there, and “they laid me on Mother Seton’s tomb,” she said. “Then they took me over to the house where she died. I do remember being placed in this little area where Mother Seton died, because I was a little afraid.”

The family returned to Baltimore for another blood test. Sister Mary Alice called Sis with the result. “‘Ann’s blood has built up! It’s normal! It’s better than mine is!’ she had exclaimed,” Tavenner wrote.

Little Ann’s health began to improve. Sister Mary Alice said, “She began to eat and take notice of things about her. Later she began to sit up and within a few days she was allowed to be up and walking. Ann continued to improve and on April 27, 1952, was discharged – a recovery we felt an answer to our prayers to Mother Seton.”

Sister Mary Alice remained a family friend until her death in 1994. Ann went on to graduate from Seton High School in Baltimore and attend cosmetology school. She was a hairdresser for many years at the J.C. Penney hair salon at Security Square Mall in Baltimore. She was married to Robert Hooe, an auto mechanic, for 25 years.

Verifying the miracle

Ann O’Neill meets Pope John XXIII in Rome. (Courtesy Ann Theresa O’Neill)

A decade of bone marrow tests verified Ann’s miraculous cure. Ann admits she balked at the final tests – they’re all administered without anesthesia – required by a Vatican tribunal investigating the cause of Mother Seton’s canonization.

Ann was barely in her teens when she reluctantly agreed to the intensely painful procedure in Boston. “I didn’t want to do it because the pain is horrible,” Ann said. “I didn’t need it because I didn’t have cancer anymore.”

“We have to do it for Mother Seton,” Ann’s mother said.

The first American-born saint

Most people will never meet one pope. Ann kissed the rings of two.

At 15, she attended Mother Seton’s beatification ceremony over which St. Pope John XXIII presided March 17, 1963. “Did you see the way the Holy Father smiled at me when they brought me to him?” Ann asked at the time. “I will never forget it.”

She was a 27-year-old mother of four when she witnessed the canonization of Mother Seton Sept. 14, 1975. St. Pope Paul VI presided at that ceremony.

“Pope Paul VI was nice – a very lovely guy,” Ann said.

In the 1960s, Ann O’Neill gazes at her figurine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. (Courtesy Ann Theresa O’Neill)

Ann’s cure, which was considered acceptable by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1959, would contribute directly toward Mother Seton’s canonization.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in New York City Aug. 28, 1774, to a prominent Episcopal family, and lost her mother at the age of three. In 1794, at the age of 19, Elizabeth married William Magee Seton, a wealthy businessman with whom she had five children.

William died of tuberculosis in 1803, leaving Elizabeth a young widow. After discovering Catholicism in Italy, where her husband had died, Elizabeth returned to the United States and entered the Catholic Church in 1805 in New York.

Elizabeth moved to Baltimore with three daughters in 1808, establishing a boarding school for girls. The following year, she moved to Emmitsburg, where she founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, the first community for apostolic, religious women established in the United States. She also began St. Joseph’s School, planting the seeds of Catholic education in the United States. Her legacy now includes religious congregations in the United States and Canada, whose members work on the unmet needs of people living in poverty in North America and beyond.

Like Mother Seton and her own mother, Ann experienced tragic loss as an adult. Mother Seton lost her husband and two grown daughters. Ann experienced divorce and the tragic loss of her youngest son, Robert. Sis was widowed in her early 50s when her husband was just 60, and she grieved the loss of her grandson. Despite these trials, the faith of all three women increased and endured.

Sis’ prayer on her wedding day was answered. “She prayed that she would like to see her generations, and she did get to see her great-great-grandchildren,” Ann said. “God answered her first prayer (and her prayer for my healing) because I’m the one with all the kids. My (four) sisters have got kids, but they don’t have kids like I’ve got kids,”

Ann O’Neill receives a blessing from Pope Paul VI in 1975. (Courtesy Ann Theresa O’Neill)

Besides her three sons and one daughter, Ann has five grandsons and three granddaughters, and five great-grandsons and three great-granddaughters. Sis lived to be almost 101.

Despite a couple of health scares – Ann wears a pacemaker to stabilize her atrial fibrillation, and she fractured her pelvis several years ago because of osteoporosis – she keeps busy. She attends daily Mass, styles hair occasionally, bakes banana bread for the great-grandchildren, tends her small flower garden with its statue of the Blessed Mother and hummingbird feeders, and feeds the ducks at a small pond across the street.

She gazes up at the Blessed Sacrament displayed on YouTube before she tunes her large TV monitor to the grotto at Lourdes, which she visited when she was 15. “It makes the house calm,” Ann said. “It’s just so refreshing.”

The saints are friends who keep her company when the great-grandkids return home, and she knows them well. Besides Mother Seton and St. Thérèse, she admires St. John Henry Newman, St. Juan Diego, Blessed Stanley Rother and St. Faustina, among others.

Ann still makes the trip to Emmitsburg when she can, visiting her dear friend, Mother Seton.

“The saints are like our friends,” Ann said. “Mother Seton was my mother’s friend. She’s my friend. And because we’re Catholic, we have a lot of friends in heaven. Even though we can’t physically see them, we do know them. And it’s amazing, because you meet new ones all the time. They’re all connecting and all helping us.”