“Let Them Be Pelted and Trampled On”

While John Henry Newman was still an Anglican, he said of Catholic missionaries: “If they want to convert England, let them go barefooted 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. I will confess that they are our betters far.” Little did Newman know at the time that a man who fit this description had just landed on English soil: Father Dominic Barberi, a middle-aged Italian Passionist who barely spoke English. One Newman scholar writes that so account of his conversion should be written without reference to Barberi. From an early age, Dominic felt a special call to minister to the English people. As a young man he joined the Passionists. Founded in Italy in the 1700’s, the Passionist charism is to practice and promote devotion to Christ’s Passion as the ultimate sign of God’s love for us through parish work, retreats, and missions. After Father Dominic arrived in England in 1841, one Passionist historian writes that he “gloried in the disgrace of the Cross,” was laughed at and even attacked by Protestants. Barberi did just what Newman said; he went about in sandals and habit preaching in the towns, was pelted and trampled on, and won the people over with his humility and his courage. It was Father Dominic who heard Newman’s confession and received him into the Roman Catholic Church. He died of overwork in 1849 and was beatified in 1963.