With the recent beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman some attention was given to the Passionist priest who received Newman into the Catholic Church. His name is Blessed Dominic Barberi.
Dominic was the youngest of six children born to poor parents near the city of Viterbo, Italy, in 1792. Both of his parents died when he was a young boy. His maternal uncle, Bartolomeo Pacelli, raised him and employed him as a sheepherder. Dominic had no formal education but learned to read from a young friend. He was privately tutored in other subjects by a Capuchin priest.
Deeply religious, the young shepherd felt a strong calling to win sinners back to the way of salvation. Through advice of a counselor he entered the Passionist Order in 1814 and was ordained in 1818. For ten years Father Barberi held the position of lector and taught theology and philosophy to the seminarians of his order. He later served as rector and held the office of provincial, during which time he kept busy giving retreats and missions.
Father Barberi had a longing to preach the Faith in England, but it did not materialize until late in his life. After establishing the congregation’s first retreat house in Belgium, the Passionist finally was sent to England where he founded the first house of the order in 1842 at Aston Hall, Staffordshire. Shortly after arriving in England, Father Barberi addressed an Open Letter in Latin to the professors at Oxford, disputing the main doctrinal and disciplinary arguments the Anglicans held for separating from Rome. It can be found as an appendix in the Life of Father Dominic of the Mother of God by Father Pius Devine. For the next seven years he was in charge of establishing other houses for the growing congregation, founding three. Sadly, he died suddenly, in 1849, of a heart attack, near Reading, while waiting for a train. Among the more renowned converts Blessed Father Barberi received into the Church were four Oratorians: John Dobree Dalgairns, John Henry Newman, and Newman’s two companions, E. S. Bowles and Richard Stanton. In 1846 he received the Honorable George Spencer (Father Ignatius of St. Paul) into the Congregation of the Passion.
