About Blessed Dominic Barberi
Dominic Barberi was born to a poor family of Italian farmers in 1792. His parents died in his early childhood and he was brought up by his maternal uncle. As a boy, he was employed to take care of sheep. An elderly priest taught him to read and although he read all the books he could obtain he had no regular education.
When Napoleon suppressed the religious communities in the Papal States, Dominic became acquainted with several Passionists living in exile near his town. He befriended them and served daily Mass with them. The Passionists are an order founded by St Paul of the Cross in 18th century Italy. He was not chosen from men in his locality for military conscription and saw that as a sign from God that he should enter a religious community and believed that he was called to preach the Gospel in far-off lands. He said in later life that he had received a specific call to preach to the people of England.
Dominic Barberi was received into the Congregation of the Passion in 1814, after the re-establishment of religious orders in the Papal States and was ordained as a priest on 1st March 1818. After ordination, he remained in Italy in a number of capacities, always mindful of his hopes to travel and preach in England. His health, however, was not good.
In September 1840 Dominic received a letter from Bishop Wiseman inviting him to start a Passionist foundation at Aston Hall in England and he visited the site in November of that year; he had been warned that the situation in England would mean that it would not be a favourable time to make such a foundation. He set out for England once more in October 1841 where he was greeted with stares and suspicion, not only as a Catholic priest but for the strange garb of the Passionist habit. A Jesuit priest of the period wrote of ‘a bleak October day in 1841, when a little Italian priest in comical attire shuffled down a ship’s gangway at Folkestone’.
He did not have an easy start to his time in England. Local Catholics feared that the arrival of Barberi and his fellow Passionists would cause renewed persecutions. He was met with ridicule and his attempts to read prayers in English were met with the laughter of his congregation. However, as the people of the area got to know him they became enamoured of him and he soon began to receive a steady stream of converts. In a neighbouring town, there was opposition to him and local youths would throw stones at him, although two youths took the decision to become Catholics when they were greatly edified to see Dominic kiss each stone that hit him and place it in his pocket. Local Protestants ministers often held anti-Catholic lectures and sermons to ward people away from Barberi and his Catholics. Converts increased so much that a new church had to be built and it was on 10th June 1844 that the first Corpus Christi procession was held in the British Isles, an event which attracted thousands of Catholics and Protestants alike. His reputation grew as he travelled to places such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham to preach his ‘missions’.
Before coming to England Dominic had kept up an interest in the Oxford Movement and wrote a letter in response to a letter from one John Dalgairns, an Oxford undergraduate, in a publication he had read. Dominic’s ‘Letter to University Professors at Oxford’ describes his long hopes for the conversion of England and his belief that the men of Oxford would be instrumental in such a conversion. At the time his letter was received Dalgairns was residing with John Henry, now St. John Henry Newman. There was some learned debate between Dominic and Dalgairns and eventually, the latter was received into the Catholic Church by Dominic at Aston in September 1845.
In October the same year, Dominic visited Littlemore, Oxford and met Newman, who made his confession to him. Newman has written how Dominic arrived soaked from the rain and as he was drying himself by the fire he, Newman, knelt and asked to be received into the Catholic Church. The community at Aston had gained 15 new religious members and in 1846 a new foundation was made at Woodchester in Gloucestershire and two years later the Passionists arrived in London.
One story told of Barberi during this time exemplifies a sense of humour. While he was visiting a convent of nuns who were instructing many converts, some of them male, Barberi was informed that some of the sisters were worried about teaching men and his response was ‘Have no fear Sisters, you are all too old and too ugly’. The sisters appreciated his sense of humour so much that they recorded the incident in their archives.
His workload inevitably took its toll on his health and from 1847 he insisted that his life had nearly run its course; he had preached numerous retreats both alone and with another, both in England and Ireland and on 27th August 1849 whilst travelling from Paddington, London to Woodchester he suffered a heart attack which was to claim his life. At that time in London, cholera was prevalent and no hotels would take him so it was decided to take him back to Reading. The train arrived more than an hour later while ‘he remained in great agony but in peace and with ‘Thy will be done ever on his lips’. He was 57 years of age. He was buried in St Anne’s Church, St Helens.
Dominic Barberi was beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1963. He is best remembered for his part in St John Henry Newman’s conversion but is also commemorated for his work in the efforts to return England to the Catholic faith in the 19th century. In his years in England, he established three churches and several chapels, preached innumerable missions and received hundreds of conversions.
It must be remembered that Catholics in England had been subject to penal laws and it was only in 1766 that penal laws started to be dismantled. The most significant measure was the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom.
