Blessed Dominic Barberi (Domenico Barberi, C.P.)
Also known as Domenico Barberi CP · Domenic of the Mother of God
Life
Domenico Barberi was born on 22 June 1792 in Pallanzana, near Viterbo in the Papal States, into a poor farming family. Orphaned young and largely self-taught, he experienced as a teenager a strong interior call to bring the Catholic faith to England, then a country he knew only by name. He entered the Passionist Congregation in 1814 and was ordained priest in 1818.
Gifted with a remarkable intellect despite his lack of formal early schooling, he taught philosophy and theology at the Passionist house of studies in Rome and served as Provincial of the order. But his heart remained fixed on the English mission, and in 1840 he was finally sent north, first founding a Passionist community at Ere in Belgium and then in 1842 establishing the first Passionist house in England at Aston Hall, Staffordshire.
His arrival was greeted with suspicion and at times open hostility - he was stoned in the streets, mocked for his accent, and treated with the contempt that English society of the time reserved for Italian Catholic priests. He bore it all with serene good humour, walking the highways of the Midlands in his rough black habit and bare feet, preaching missions, hearing confessions, and quietly winning converts by the warmth of his charity.
The defining moment of his life came on the rainy night of 8 October 1845, when at Littlemore, near Oxford, John Henry Newman knelt before him and asked to be received into the Catholic Church. The encounter, which Newman himself recalled with deep affection, is commemorated by a sculpture at the Catholic church now named for Barberi at Littlemore.
He died suddenly of a heart attack on 27 August 1849 in a railway hotel at Reading, Berkshire. He was beatified by Pope Paul VI on 27 October 1963.
Patronage
- England and Wales
- converts to Catholicism
- Passionist Congregation
- ecumenism
Suggested prayer
O God, who so lovingly raised Blessed Dominic to the heights of holiness, learning and apostolic zeal and made him a powerful minister of your mercy, listen to our humble request. We pray that you will in your goodness, grant a miracle through the intercession of Blessed Dominic, so that the Church may further honour him on earth and that many more people will come to know and invoke the help of this faithful servant of the Church. We ask this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Mary, Mother of Holy Hope, Pray for Us. Saint John Henry Newman, Pray for Us. Blessed Dominic Barberi, Pray for Us.
Sources
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