Anne Carroll
Executive Director and Founder, Seton School (Manassas, Va.)
Founder, Seton Home Study School
The Cardinal Newman Society gratefully presents the Saint John Henry Newman Award to Anne Carroll, the founder of Seton School in Manassas, Va., and founder of Seton Home Study School. Her pioneering leadership in independent, lay-led Catholic education and Catholic homeschooling has blessed thousands of families. On their behalf, we recognize Anne Carroll for her extraordinary love and devotion to her students, and we uphold Mrs. Carroll, Seton School, and Seton Home Study School as models of faithful Newman Guide Recommended education.
Mrs. Carroll graduated from Loretto Heights College in Denver, Colorado, and earned a master’s degree from New York University. She married Dr. Warren Carroll and helped bring him into the Catholic Church in 1968. Warren worked for Triumph magazine, a journal promoting Catholic renewal amid the upheaval of the 1970s, and in 1975—the year Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton was canonized—Mrs. Carroll founded Seton School to provide a faithful Catholic education for junior and senior high school students.
Mrs. Carroll has led the school ever since, appointing Bob Pennefather in 2019 to direct the school’s day-to-day functions while she continues as executive director. The school is now at capacity with 350 students and has many more applicants. Most importantly, it is a school that puts the Catholic formation of its students before anything, and it was the first high school to be recommended in The Newman Guide.
“We began Seton with nothing, but God made something out of nothing,” Mrs. Carroll wrote upon the school’s 50th anniversary. Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington called Seton School a gift to the Diocese and to the Church.
In 1977, Mrs. Carroll was instrumental in her husband’s founding and early development of Christendom College, which began in Triangle, Va., but later moved to Front Royal, Va. Christendom College has been strongly recommended in The Newman Guide since its first edition in 2007.
In the early 1980s, families outside Northern Virginia sought the same quality Catholic education Seton School provided, but it was sadly lacking in their local schools. In 1982, Mrs. Carroll founded Seton Home Study School and appointed Dr. Mary Kay Clark as director. Today the faithful Catholic homeschooling program boasts more than 14,000 enrolled students, 20,000 students who use Seton materials, and about 50,000 students using Seton Testing Services.
Mrs. Carroll is also the author of two widely used history texts: Christ the King: Lord of History (TAN Books, 1994) and Christ and the Americas (TAN Books, 1997). She has received numerous honors, including the Benemerenti Medal from Pope Leo XIV, an honorary doctorate from the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College, a second honorary doctorate of human letters from Christendom College, Christendom’s St. Catherine of Siena Award for distinguished service to the Church, and the St. Thomas More Award from the Diocese of Arlington.
