Blessed Dominic Barberi 1792 - 1849 Apostile of Unity

Blessed Dominic Barberi, 1792 – 1849
Apostle of Christian Unity

See also: Dominic of the Mother of God

Researched by Sister Dominic Savio [Dr E. Hamer] CP
Mt St Joseph Convent, Bolton BL3 4HF

Blessed Dominic Barberi was born in 1792 near Viterbo in the Papal States in Italy, where his parents were farmers of an olive-growing estate. He was orphaned, however, when he was ten and his uncle, who adopted him, although a gentleman farmer of independent means, did not appreciate the value of an academic education and so neglected to send Dominic to school. Thirsting for knowledge, with an old Latin dictionary and a Bible as his textbook, Dominic became erudite in both Latin and Sacred Scripture. Later he became familiar with the library of a group of Passionists, whom Napoleon’s suppression of religious orders had forced to live nearby. Endowed with rare supernatural gifts, Dominic was already advanced in mysticism when he entered the Passionist novitiate in 1814. He had even already received a mystical understanding that he would be both a priest and a missionary. Shortly after his admission, he received another mystical understanding that he would evangelize England and other places in North West Europe. From then, like St Paul of the Cross before him, he found it impossible to pray without praying for England.

After years as Professor of Theology or Philosophy or Sacred Eloquence and as Rector and Provincial, as well as a wonderful missionary and retreat-master, at last in 1840 he led a small group of Passionists to make a foundation in Belgium. From there, later that year, he visited England, the first Passionist to set foot in this country. In April 1841 he began to correspond with the Anglican John Henry Newman and his followers in Littlemore, near Oxford. In October 1841 he came with one companion to stay in England and in February 1842 he opened the first Passionist monastery, or retreat, in England at Aston Hall, near Stone in Staffordshire. It was in Stone that he would have met Elizabeth Prout, the future Foundress of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion, and at Aston Hall that Father George Spencer, the future Father Ignatius, entered the Passionist novitiate in 1846. Blessed Dominic met Newman face-to-face for the first time in 1844. On 9 October 1845 he received him into the Catholic Church at Littlemore.

Blessed Dominic built a church-school in Stone and the Church of St Michael beside Aston Hall, as well as a new chapel in Aston Hall. With the help of William Leigh, he also built the Church of the Annunciation, a school and a retreat at Woodchester in Gloucestershire and, with the help of John Smith, founded the mission, with church, school and retreat, and later a convent, at St Anne’s, Sutton, St Helen’s. Working with endless zeal for the Conversion of England, he gave a hundred missions and retreats over the country, before dying of a heart attack at Reading, whilst traveling to Woodchester, on 27 August 1849.

First interred in the Church of St Michael, Aston Hall, his incorrupt remains were later translated to St Anne’s, Sutton. Declared ‘Venerable’ in 1911, Father Dominic Barberi was declared ‘Blessed’ by Pope Paul VI in 1963.