FATHER DOMINIC,

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1180, 15 July 1911, Page 9

FATHER DOMINIC,

PROCESS OF BEATIFICATION". The "Tablet" of May .27 stales: The Faithful of Ualv and (ho faithful of England, between whom Father Dominic is a link, will rejoice to hear that the "Ordinary Process'' (so-called because instituted by the Ordinary of the Diocese), having been happily concluded is now to be succeeded at Homo by the Apostolic Process of his Beatification. Following tho holding of the Bishop of Liverpool's Episcopal Commission, Father Dominie of tho Mother of God Will in due course bo declared Venerable. His namo is already familiar and honoured among us; for it is that of the Italian Passionist who received John Henry Newman into the Catholic Church. "lie is a simple, holy man," wrote his greatest proselyte,' "and withal gifted with remarkable powers." How, lrom his youth, from the days even when lie watched sheep 011 the Apennines, ho had been "led to havo direct and distinct thoughts—first about the countries of tho North, and then of England," Newman himself has told with .1 suggestiveness which the Process now in'hand comes to confirm aud justify. He arrived in England as a guest at Oscott in tho October ot'lßll, and lrom Uscott he wroto: "L am hero in England—como to stay; and 1 hope- to work hero all the days of my lifo for tho glory of God and the good of souls," At Oscott the students mocked his broken English, and disappointed him by what 110 deemed their chilliness in piety.' Similar, or worse, discouragements awaited him at Aston, in Staffordshire,..where he went to plant his congregation in England, as be bad alreadv jilantcd. it iu Belgium. Tho clergy around him gave him 110 hearty welcome. Such discomfitures, if such they bo, are the commonplaces in the history of saints. He was the first to bring back into England tho wearing of the tonsure. "The old monks of Britain," as history records, "fought hard about tho tonsure up to the days of King Osw.v; but a head marked with any form of tonsure would have been tho mark of the headman's axe f-inco tho time of the Reformation." Manager Benson, not long ago, looked forward to the day when bare-foot friars would bo seen preaching the Gospel in the market-places of England, in testimony of their readiness to make fools of themselves for the love of Christ. Perhaps it is the first step that costs, and that step was taken by Father Dominic; for he, too, it was who brought back' to England the religious habit. He introduced into England "missions" and "retreats." Tn 18tG, a year after the reception of Newman, Father Dominic gave the Passionist habit to the Hon. George Spencer—then already a secular priost of fourteen years' standing, and henceforth to bo known as Father Ignatius of St. Paul. Happy was the deed in-itself and in its consequences. During the-last three years of his life, Father Dominic had the consoling help of this brave ally; and after Father Dominic's lonely death upon the platform of Reading Station, blessing England with his latest breath. Father Ignatius Snencer carried on what he had begun. Both these beloved men. whose labours God abundantly blessed, rest together in the Passionist Clnirph at St. Helens, where the House of their Order, newly rebuilt, now stands as their memorial iu stone.