St. Clement Mary Hofbauer
Feast day: March 15
“I know but three men of superhuman energy: Napoleon, Goethe and Clement Hofbauer.”
These are the words of a friend of St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, a Redemptorist priest often called the second founder of the Redemptorists for his many works at evangelizing and offering charity to the poor in northern Europe.
Born in 1751 in what is today the Czech Republic and baptized John, St. Clement Mary was the ninth of 12 children. His family could not afford to send him to seminary, but he never gave up on becoming a priest. Apprenticed as a baker after the death of his father, he was permitted to study Latin at a Norbertine monastery. When the monastery’s abbot died, St. Clement Mary became a hermit, but this vocational choice was also stymied when Austrian Emperor Joseph II later forbade the hermit life.
Returning to his bakery trade, now in Vienna, he and a like-minded friend made two pilgrimages to Rome. At this time St. Clement Mary determined that his call was to be a missionary. It was also during this time frame that he met two wealthy patrons at Vienna’s cathedral who offered to pay for his seminary training. On an annual pilgrimage to Rome, he was introduced to the Redemptorists, and he joined the order shortly before being ordained in 1785.
After his ordination, he was sent to Austria with a fellow Redemptorist friend to start a community there, although he endured opposition from the Austrian emperor, who exerted state control over the Church. Nevertheless, the founder of the Redemptorists, St. Alphonsus Ligouri, prophesied their success. While it proved impossible to found a Redemptorist house in Vienna under Emperor Joseph II, St. Clement and his friend were able to do so in Warsaw with the support of the Polish king.
There, with the motto, “Take heart, God directs everything,” St. Clement Mary and his companions worked with indefatigable energy, particularly in the confessional and for the poor. They founded an orphanage, a school for boys, and several religious confraternities. St. Clement Mary gave daily classes on the instruction of the Catholic faith to Protestants and Jews, and many converted. From 1789 to 1808, he revived the Church in Warsaw by his constant parish missions. Outside of Warsaw, he sent missionaries to establish the Redemptorists in Germany, Switzerland and in other parts of Poland.
On one of his many begging expeditions to support his works of charity, St. Clement Mary entered a tavern where a man spat in his face. In his calm humility, the priest responded, “That was a gift to me personally; now please let me have something for my poor children.”
When Napoleon overran Poland in 1806, he suppressed religious orders, and in 1808 St. Clement Mary was sent to prison for four weeks. Finally, he and other Redemptorists were forced to flee to Vienna. Although initially arrested and jailed there for three days, he later was appointed chaplain and director of an Ursuline convent. Believing that the Gospel must be preached anew, St. Clement Mary was devoted to the conversion and training of young men. He took time for the poor and provided them with bread and soup himself almost every day.
St. Clement Mary worked amongst all classes of people. In addition to his work with the poor, he influenced the Congress of Vienna and the culture of his time, especially through his friendships with leading figures of Viennese Romanticism. His influence helped defeat a project to establish a German National Church and eventually succeeded in setting up the Redemptorists north of the Alps, even though he didn’t live to see it.
St. Clement Mary died from exhaustion March 15, 1820. Pope Pius VII noted that “Religion in Austria has lost its chief support,” as the streets of Vienna were crowded during St. Clement Mary’s funeral. More than any other single individual, he can be credited with countering the state regulation of the Church under Emperor Joseph II. St. Clement Mary Hofbauer was canonized May 20, 1909.
Reflection
Dear Jesus, when I hear your call, may I never give up trying to follow it. May I trust that you will send me good people to help me and then in turn share your grace with others in need.
Prayer
O God, who through blessed Clement Mary Hofbauer
brought peoples without faith
from darkness to the light of truth,
grant us, through his intercession,
that we may stand firm in faith
and remain constant in the hope of the Gospel he preached.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
