A Time for Miracles

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A Time For Miracles
[[Image: \|200px\|]] 'A screen capture of the opening credits'
Directed by	Michael O'Herlihy
Produced by	Beverlee Dean
Written by	Henry Denker
Starring	Kate Mulgrew, Lorne Greene, John Forsythe, Rossano Brazzi
Distributed by	ABC Circle Films
Release date(s)	December 21, 1980
Running time	97 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

A Time For Miracles is a 1980 made for TV film chronicling the life story of America's first native born saint, Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton. It was produced by ABC Circle Films for the American Broadcasting Company and telecast December 21, 1980 as a Christmas special. The film was created by Beverlee Dean and directed by Michael O'Herlihy. The script was written by Henry Denker with collaboration with Sister Mary Hilaire and filmed in Georgia. A Time For Miracles starred Ryan's Hope and Star Trek: Voyager actress Kate Mulgrew as Elizabeth Seton. John Forsythe and Lorne Greene also star.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Elizabeth Bayley Seton (1774-1821) was a happily married New York Episcopalian socialite and mother of five whose life gets turned around after her husband, William Seton, dies of consumption in Italy after his shipping business went bankrupt. As a widow of five children, she opened a small school in an effort to support herself and family.

She decided to convert to Catholicism, much to the protest and distaste of her friends and family. As a social outcast, she was left with nothing so she and her daughters took refuge in Baltimore. Under the wing of John Carroll, the first American Catholic bishop, she opened a school, established a religious routine and took religious vows, thus becoming `Mother Seton.' Eventually she, her daughter, and a band of young women who had joined her rattled west in a covered wagon into the countryside, to Emmitsburg, Maryland., where, on an initial diet of salt pork and carrot coffee, she set up a school and a convent for her growing sisterhood, Sisters of Charity. She died from consumption at 46.

Though not meeting the four miracle requirement to become a saint, she was canonized in 1975.