Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer

He was born at Tasswitz in Moravia on December 26, 1751, and baptized John. ¹² The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the family name was Dvořák, "better known by its German equivalent, Hofbauer." ¹ His father, a grazier and butcher in the encyclopedia's account and a cattle breeder in the Archdiocese of Vienna's, died when the boy was six. ¹⁴ The encyclopedia makes him the youngest of twelve children; Franciscan Media says he was the ninth of twelve. ¹² Benedict XVI, preaching at Brno in 2009, reminded his listeners that Hofbauer was "born in this diocese." ⁶

He wanted to be a priest from early on, and there was no money for it. ¹² The archdiocese says he started an apprenticeship as a baker in Znojmo at sixteen. ⁴ From 1771 to 1775 he worked for the Premonstratensian monastery at Bruck, and Franciscan Media says the job let him attend classes in its Latin school. ¹² The encyclopedia adds that he spent all his spare time on study. ¹

After Bruck he tried life as a hermit. ¹² When Emperor Joseph II abolished hermitages, he went to Vienna and back to baking. ¹² He made two pilgrimages to Rome and then tried the hermit's life again in 1782-83, this time under the protection of Barnaba Chiaramonti, Bishop of Tivoli, the future Pope Pius VII. ¹ It was then, the encyclopedia and the archdiocese agree, that he took the name Clement, "by which he was ever afterwards known." ¹⁴

Back in Vienna, he was at last able to study at the university. ¹ The encyclopedia credits "the generosity of benefactors." ¹ Franciscan Media tells how that came about: after serving Mass at St. Stephen's Cathedral, he called a carriage for two ladies waiting in the rain, and when they learned he could not afford his studies, they offered to support him and his friend Thaddeus. ²

In 1784 he and that friend, Thaddäus Hübl, walked to Rome on his third pilgrimage, and the two were received into the Redemptorist novitiate at San Giuliano on the Esquiline. ¹ Franciscan Media says they were drawn to Saint Alphonsus Liguori's vision of religious life. ² After a shortened probation they were professed on March 19, 1785, and ordained a few days later; the archdiocese gives the ordination as March 29, 1785, at Alatri. ¹⁴ Clement was thirty-four. ²

The new priests were sent back across the Alps to found a house of the congregation there, and the encyclopedia records that Alphonsus, still alive, prophesied their success. ¹ Joseph II's laws made a house in Vienna impossible, so they went on to Warsaw. ¹² At the nuncio's request King Stanislaus Poniatowski gave them St. Benno's, the German national church. ¹ Franciscan Media says they found many German-speaking Catholics there who had been left without priests by the suppression of the Jesuits. ²

At first they lived in great poverty and preached outdoors. ² Once they had St. Benno's, says Franciscan Media, they preached five sermons a day for nine years, two in German and three in Polish. ² The encyclopedia adds a second church where sermons were preached in French, and daily classes of instruction for Protestants and Jews. ¹ Clement founded an orphanage and a school for boys, and the archdiocese also credits the two men with schools for poor children and handicraft schools for girls. ¹²⁴ The encyclopedia dates the Warsaw years from 1786; the archdiocese says they were assigned to St. Benno's in 1787. ¹⁴

They drew in new members and sent missionaries into Poland, Germany and Switzerland, and every one of those foundations was eventually lost to the politics of the time. ² Thaddäus Hübl died in 1807, of typhus, the archdiocese says. ¹⁴ In 1808, on orders from Paris, the house at Warsaw and three others Clement had founded were suppressed and the Redemptorists expelled. ¹ The archdiocese gives the reason as Napoleon's suspicion that they sided with the Bourbons. ⁴ Franciscan Media says Clement was imprisoned and expelled, and arrested again before he reached Vienna. ²

He arrived in Vienna with one companion. ¹ The archdiocese says he was arrested in Vienna and released after three days, then served as assistant priest at the Minorite church before becoming rector at St. Ursula's. ⁴ The encyclopedia describes him as chaplain and director at an Ursuline convent for the last twelve years of his life. ¹

From there, in the encyclopedia's words, he "exercised a veritable apostolate among all classes in the capital from the Emperor Francis downward." ¹ Franciscan Media lists the work: hearing the confessions of rich and poor, visiting the sick, counseling the powerful. ² The archdiocese says he brought back the beauty of the liturgy with flowers, incense, candles and the music of Mozart, and that his lodgings became a meeting place for the famous and the ordinary, the young and the poor. ⁴ It also says he gave the poor bread and soup with his own hands almost every day. ⁴ Many of his sermons survive, it adds, because he was closely spied on. ⁴

He could not found a regular Redemptorist house, and he gave himself instead to the conversion and training of young men. ¹ Franciscan Media calls a Catholic college his crowning work. ² There was opposition. For a time the authorities stopped him from preaching, and an attempt was made "at the highest levels" to have him banished. ²

The encyclopedia quotes his friend Werner: "I know but three men of superhuman energy," followed by the list, "Napoleon, Goethe, and Clement Hofbauer." ¹ It goes on to say that the extinction of Josephinism was due to him "perhaps more than to any single individual." ¹

He died in Vienna on March 15, 1820, from exhaustion, according to the archdiocese; the encyclopedia gives the year as 1821. ¹²⁴ Pius VII, the bishop who had once sheltered him as a hermit, said that "Religion in Austria" had lost "its chief support." ¹ He was buried at Maria Enzersdorf, and his remains now lie in Maria am Gestade in Vienna. ⁴ The congregation he had been unable to establish there was established almost immediately after his death, as he had predicted. ¹⁴ Franciscan Media says that by then it was firmly established north of the Alps. ²

Leo XIII beatified him on January 29, 1888, and Pius X canonized him on May 20, 1909. ¹⁴ Benedict XVI marked the centenary at Brno, holding up "Saint Clement Maria Hofbauer, priest and religious, born in this diocese and canonized one hundred years ago" among the saints of the Czech lands. ⁶

Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer is the patron saint of Vienna. The Archdiocese of Vienna calls him its "city patron," and the Redemptorists record that Pius X declared him patron saint of the city on January 14, 1914. ⁴⁵ Vienna kept the centenary in 2014 with a Mass in St. Stephen's Cathedral, where a large statue of him has stood since 2001. ⁵

The Redemptorists also name him patron saint of bakers, the trade he worked at for years before he could study, and note that traditional "Clement loaves" were handed out after that jubilee Mass. ⁵ Neither the encyclopedia nor Franciscan Media mentions a patronage. ¹²

Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer's feast day is March 15, the anniversary of his death. Vatican News lists him on that day as "St. Clement M. Hofbauer," together with Saint Zachary, Pope. ³ Franciscan Media also states that "his liturgical feast is celebrated on March 15," though it runs its own Saint of the Day entry for him on March 16. ²

For most of his first thirty years Clement baked bread and studied in the hours left over. ¹² He tried the hermit's life twice, made pilgrimage after pilgrimage to Rome, and was well into his thirties before he was ordained. ¹² The path to the priesthood went through a bakery and a university paid for by other people's generosity, and the sources do not tidy that into a plan.

Franciscan Media's reflection on him starts from failure. ² Every foundation in Germany, Poland and Switzerland had to be given up; the house in Warsaw, after twenty years of work, was closed by order from Paris; his chief helper had died the year before; and he reached Vienna only after another arrest. ¹² He began again in that city, and the house he most wanted in Vienna was only granted after his death. ¹⁴

What he did in the meantime was ordinary pastoral work done at length: confessions, sick calls, sermons, bread and soup for the poor at his door. ²⁴ The archdiocese records a saying associated with him, "Take heart, God directs everything!" ⁴

Vienna, where he had been arrested, stopped from preaching for a time and made the object of an attempt to banish him, named him its patron in 1914. ²⁴⁵ The bakers who keep him as their patron have one of their own: he went back to the oven more than once while he waited for a way into the priesthood. ¹²⁵