BLESSED DOMINIC BARBERI
Blessed Dominic Barberi, as described by the great English convert, John Henry Newman.
"On the Apennines, near Viterbo, there dwelt a shepherd-boy, in the first years of this century, whose mind had early been drawn heavenward; and, one day, as he prayed before an image of the Madonna, he felt a vivid intimation that he was destined to preach the Gospel under the northern sky.
"There appeared no means by which a Roman peasant should be turned into a missionary; nor did the prospect open, when this youth found himself, first a lay brother, then a Father, in the Congregation of the Passion.
"Yet, though no external means appeared, the inward impression did not fade; on the contrary it became more definite, and, in process of time, instead of the dim north, England was engraved on his heart.
"And, strange to say, as years went on, without his seeking, for he was simply under obedience, our peasant found himself at length upon the very shore of the stormy northern sea, whence Caesar of old looked out for a new world to conquer; yet that he should cross the strait was still as little likely as before.
"However, it was as likely as that he should ever have got so near it; and he used to eye the restless, godless waves, and wonder with himself whether the day would ever come when he should be carried over them.
"And come it did, not however by any determination of his own, but by the same Providence which thirty years before had given him the anticipation of it...The thought of England came into his ordinary prayers; and in his last years, after a vision during Mass, as if he had been Augustine or Mellitus, he talked of his 'sons' in England." (*)
Fr. Dominic of the Mother of God was a spiritual son of St. Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), the founder of the Passionists.
(*) John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986, pp.291-292.
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Dominic received an interior call which led him to believe that he was called to preach the Gospel in far off lands. Later he would affirm that he had received a specific call to preach to the people of England. Saint Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionist Congregation, also had a great enthusiasm for the conversion of England.
Dominic is best remembered for his part in Newman’s conversion, but is also commemorated for his exhausting work in the efforts to return England to the Catholic faith in the nineteenth century. such was Dominic’s work in England that Cardinal Bourne said of him in 1926:
"Of all the preachers of the divine word who have worked for the salvation of souls in England there is no one to whom we are more indebted than the Servant of God, Dominic Barberi. I should consider myself happy if I had the power to dedicate this whole diocese to his care and protection and be allowed to honour him as our Patron and Protector in England."
In his short years in England Dominic established three churches, several chapels and preached innumerable missions and received hundreds of converts, not only Newman, but others such as Spencer and Dalgairns. Dominic now lies at rest with Father Ignatius and Mother Mary Prout (whom Dominic had received into the Church and who founded the Sisters of the Cross and Passion) in the Shrine Church of Saint Anne and Blessed Dominic in Sutton, St. Helens. In life the last time the three had been together was at the church of St. Chad’s in Manchester.
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