THE
P RTAL
May 2013
Page 14
Thoughts on Newman
Barberi and Newman
Two very Different Men United
in the Service of Truth
by Br Sean of The Work
In the situation of the Church at present, often beset by sporadic attacks by the secular media, it is
disconcerting to see how many Catholics have given in to the subtle temptation of comparing. To compare
one person to another is not only unjust towards God’s bountiful diversity of gifts, but also lacks the charity
which should animate the lives of Christians.
We need only look at the life of two of England’s most conversion of England. A year later the Passionists
recently beatified Churchmen to see how different they decided that it was now the time for Barberi to leave
were, yet how firmly united in the search for truth and for England via Belgium.
the service of God and his Church.
On 26 th May 1840 he left Italy and was never to return.
no formal education
Some five years later on a cold night on 8 th October
Domenico Giovanni Luigi Barberi was born at 1845 this simple Passionist made his way from Oxford
Pallanzana, near Viterbo, Italy, on 22 June 1792. The to Littlemore in the rain to receive into ‘the one fold of
youngest of eight children, Barberi’s father was a the redeemer’ one of England’s greatest sons.
simple farmer of strong faith and devotion. At the age
of twenty, in 1812, Barberi joined the relatively young the opposite of Newman
congregation of the Passionists. Just two years later
Barberi was quite the opposite of Newman. In
Barberi received what he understood as a divine call appearance he was short, stout with bushy eyebrows
to be an apostle for England.
and piercing eyes. In his sermons, delivered in heavily
accented English, he often used wit, urging his
The challenges which faced him in the prospect of congregation to become saints, but ‘but not canonised
fulfilling this mission were great. He had no formal ones: it costs too much.’ Exhausted and overworked,
education, not to mention any knowledge of the English Barberi died of a heart attack at the Railway Tavern,
language. Yet he never let go of this the call he felt to go Reading, on 27 August 1849, while travelling on one of
to England. His superiors noted his determination and his endless journeys throughout the country.
he set about studying for the priesthood.
huge amount of unpublished works
Within 10 years he was he was teaching philosophy
and theology at the Passionist house in Rome. Their
archives reveal a huge amount of unpublished works
by Barberi, running to over 180 titles, including
philosophical, devotional and political works. One of
his most significant works was his Lament of England,
(1831), a threnody recounting the lost glories of
the Catholic Church in England. It was two English
converts, the Hon. George Spencer and Ambrose
Phillipps De Lisle, who rekindled Barberi’s desire to
go to England.
a great love for England
Before Newman became a Roman Catholic in 1841
he wrote of the Roman missionaries who had come
to convert them: ‘If they want to convert England, let
them go barefoot into our manufacturing towns, let
them preach to the people, like St Francis Xavier, let
them be pelted and trampled on—and I will own that
they can do what we cannot.’
Barberi did just this, so that after his conversion
Newman described how deeply moved he was at the
sight of him: ‘When his figure came to my sight, I was
moved deeply in the strangest way [...] the affability of
his figure, combined with all his holiness were already
prayer for the conversion of England
for me a Saint’s speech. No wonder therefore that I
When the Oxford Movement was at its height became his convert and his penitent. He had a great
Spencer and De Lisle led a crusade of prayer for the love for England.’