Robert Seton

Robert Seton (28 August 1839 – 1927) was a descendant of the New York "aristocratic" Seton and Bayley families, Seton was also a monsignor in the Roman Catholic Church and titular archbishop of Heliopolis.

St. Joseph's Church

He was born in Pisa, Italy, and educated in Mount St. Mary's College of Emmitsburg, Maryland, and in the Academia Ecclesiastica, Rome, where he was graduated with the degree of D.D. In 1866 he was raised to the rank of private chamberlain to Pope Pius IX. He was the first person from the United States that was honored with the Roman Prelatura, and was the dean of all the monsignori in the United States. He was made prothonotary apostolic in 1867, and rector of St. Joseph's Church, Jersey City, in 1876. He was a priest of the then-Diocese of Newark, New Jersey.

He wrote Memoirs, Letters, and Journal of Elizabeth Seton (2 vols., New York, 1869) and Essays on Various Subjects, chiefly Roman (1882). He privately published An Old Family, the Setons of Scotland and America (1899) which is a well researched genealogy of the Seton family. He was also a frequent contributor to Roman Catholic periodicals. See the Robert Seton Family Papers, University of Notre Dame Archives.

He was the fourth of William and Emily (Prime) Seton's seven children; the grandson of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the American Sisters of Charity in 1809; and cousin of Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley, first bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, and founder of Seton Hall University in 1856.