Ann Teresa O’Neill, healed in Seton canonization miracle, dies at 78

As a young girl, Ann Teresa O’Neill’s miraculous cure from leukemia was accepted as a miracle to advance St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s path to sainthood.

Ann Teresa O’Neill, whose confirmed miracle led to the canonization of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, died on July 17 at age 78.

O’Neill, of Easton, Maryland, had leukemia as a child, and her cure was accepted for Seton’s path to sainthood in 1975.

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore will serve as the principal celebrant for O’Neill’s funeral Mass on July 25 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Interment will follow on the grounds of the shrine.

“Ann O’Neill spent more than seventy years answering questions about a miracle,” Rob Judge, executive director of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, said in a statement following her death. “Yet, if you talked with her for any length of time, you discovered she wasn’t really interested in talking about miracles.”

“She wanted to talk about her mother’s faith. She wanted to talk about Mother Seton. Mostly, she wanted to talk about Jesus,” he said.

She wanted to talk about her mother’s faith. She wanted to talk about Mother Seton. Mostly, she wanted to talk about Jesus. That may be the clearest evidence of why God chose her life to become part of one of the most important stories in American Catholic history.”

Rob Judge

Executive director of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

“That may be the clearest evidence of why God chose her life to become part of one of the most important stories in American Catholic history,” he said.

“The saints are like our friends,” O’Neill said in an interview with the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Catholic Review in 2025. “Mother Seton was my mother’s friend. She’s my friend. And because we’re Catholic, we have a lot of friends in heaven.”

Born on Oct. 7, 1947, O’Neill was the daughter of the late Felixena OʼNeill and the late William Richard OʼNeill.

She is survived by her children, Joseph Hooe, Gerard Hooe, and Mary Alice Zawodny, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a funeral notice said. She was preceded in death by her son Robert Eugene Hooe Jr.

The miracle that helped Mother Seton become a saint

Born in Baltimore, O’Neill developed advanced leukemia as a young girl in 1952. Despite doctors trying every treatment, she grew more sick and her case was considered hopeless.

During Holy Week, it was expected that the 4-year-old girl would pass within a few weeks.

While her family prepared for her loss, Sister Mary Alice Fowler, supervisor of the children’s ward at St. Agnes Hospital, gave O’Neill’s mother prayers for Seton’s intercession and had her give them to relatives and friends.

She pinned a cloth that had touched Seton’s remains to O’Neill’s hospital gown. Family members, friends, and other religious leaders began a novena for O’Neill.

On Good Friday in 1952, with her daughter’s condition deteriorating, O’Neill’s mother took her to Mother Seton’s resting place in Emmitsburg — where Seton started the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, the first community for religious women established in the U.S., and the first Catholic school for girls.

Against doctors’ wishes, O’Neill’s parents drove her to Emmitsburg, laid her on Seton’s tomb in the cemetery, and took her inside Mother Seton’s house where the saint had died of tuberculosis in 1821.

Once her mother returned O’Neill to the hospital, doctors performed blood work and testing. On Easter Monday her blood count was normal. Constant tests over the following years showed her health to be normal.

O’Neillʼs cure was accepted for Seton’s path to sainthood. Pope Paul VI officially canonized Mother Seton on Sept. 14, 1975, the ceremony for which O’Neill attended in Rome.