Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer (1751-1820)

Birth in Tasswitz into a Poor Family (1751)

John Hofbauer was born on December 26, 1751, Saint Stephen’s Day, in Tasswitz (now Tasovice), a small village in Moravia then part of the Habsburg Empire.^[23][24] His father, Pavel Dvořák, a breeder and butcher, had Germanized his Czech surname Dvořák to Hofbauer; he died when the child was only six years old, leaving a large family—John was the ninth of twelve children—in poverty.^[25][26]

His deeply devout mother entrusted him early to prayer. Tradition holds that she led the orphan before a crucifix, telling him that henceforth Christ would be his father. The boy showed a keen desire to study and began learning Latin with the village priest, an early sign of a priestly vocation; but upon the death of this priest, around the age of fourteen, the lessons ceased for lack of means.^[27]

The Baker Apprentice and the Dream of the Priesthood

Deprived of formal studies, John became a baker apprentice in Znaim (Znojmo), a few kilometers from his village.^[28] Around 1771, he entered the service of the bakery of the Premonstratensian monastery of Bruck (Louka), near Znaim, where he worked during years of war and famine while dedicating his free hours to study.^[29] The craft of baking would never truly leave him: later, in Warsaw, he would return to the oven to feed his orphans, which is why he is today invoked as the patron saint of bakers.^[30]

His desire for the priesthood, however, did not fade. But Emperor Joseph II had closed traditional seminaries and subjected clergy formation to strict state control: for a poor Moravian orphan, the path to the altar seemed closed.

The Hermit Who Became Clement Mary

Unable to study, John chose solitude. From 1775 onward, he embraced the hermit life, first in Moravia, then through various pilgrimages.^[31] It was during these years that he took the religious name Clement Mary—Clement in honor of Saint Clement of Rome, Mary out of devotion to the Virgin—under which he would henceforth be known.^[32]

But the solitary ideal clashed with politics. In 1782-1783, Emperor Joseph II abolished all hermitages in his states in the name of Josephinist rationalization. Clement was forced to leave his retreat and returned to Vienna, where he resumed his work as a baker.^[33] Providence, through this uprooting, brought him closer to his true vocation.

Rome, Tivoli, and the Meeting with Bishop Chiaramonti

Before this prohibition, Clement had already made two pilgrimages to Rome. During a stay in Italy (1782-1783), he lived for some time as a hermit near Tivoli, at the sanctuary of Our Lady of Quintiliolo, under the protection of Bishop Barnaba Chiaramonti—the future Pope Pius VII.^[34][35] This encounter would weave a providential bond: thirty years later, it was this same Chiaramonti, now pope, who would defend Hofbauer against the Austrian state.

Back in Vienna, Clement met at Mass some pious benefactresses—three elderly ladies, according to tradition—who, struck by his fervor, financed his studies.^[36][37] Since the emperor had closed the seminaries, he pursued theology studies at the University of Vienna—which the New Catholic Encyclopedia dates between 1780 and 1784—interrupted by his hermit stay at Tivoli (1782–1783) and completed upon his return to Vienna, in teaching imbued with Josephinism and rationalism where he found no true access to spiritual life.^{[38][39][40][41]} However, he found a spiritual father in the former Jesuit Nicholas de Diessbach, who likely introduced him to the writings of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori—a discreet seed of a vocation that would soon mature in Rome.^[42] At nearly thirty years old, the former baker was finally on the path to the priesthood—but it would be in Rome, not Vienna, that he would find his spiritual family.

Joining the Sons of Saint Alphonsus (1784-1785)

In 1784, Clement made a third pilgrimage to Rome with his friend Thaddée Hübl (Thaddäus Hübl).^[43] In the Eternal City, the two companions discovered the young Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, founded half a century earlier by Saint Alphonsus de Liguori to evangelize the poor in the countryside. Captivated, they entered the novitiate of San Giuliano, on the Esquiline Hill.^[44]

After a shortened novitiate, Clement and Thaddée made their religious profession on March 19, 1785, the feast of Saint Joseph, and were ordained priests on March 29, 1785, at the cathedral of Alatri.^[45][46] Clement-Marie Hofbauer thus became the first non-Italian Redemptorist in history — and the seed of an expansion that Saint Alphonsus, who died two years later, had not been able to achieve during his lifetime.

Vicar General Beyond the Alps

The Superior General sent the two new priests to bring the Congregation north of the Alps, where it had no houses yet.^[47] The task was immense: Germanic and Slavic Europe was influenced by Josephinism, Febronianism, and the spirit of the Enlightenment, while the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 had left a gaping pastoral void.

Clement was soon appointed Vicar General of the institute for the transalpine regions.^[48] Unable to settle in Vienna, locked down by Josephinist legislation, he directed his zeal further east — toward Poland, where the work of his life awaited him.

Saint Benno and the "Perpetual Mission"

Arriving in Warsaw at the beginning of 1787 — penniless, having given their last coins to beggars — Hofbauer and his companions were entrusted by the archbishop with the care of the Church of Saint Benno (Sankt Benno), the national church of German-speaking Catholics in the Polish capital.^[49][50] It was here, in a city of nearly 120,000 inhabitants, that Clement would carry out an unprecedentedly intense pastoral ministry for twenty-one years.

He established what was called the "perpetual mission": no longer a temporary mission of a few weeks, but preaching and administration of the sacraments continuously, throughout the year.^[51][52] The daily schedule, as reported in the accounts of the time, was staggering.

The rule of Saint Benno provided each day for Mass and instruction, five sermons (in German and Polish), three high Masses per week, the Office of the Virgin, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, the Stations of the Cross, Vespers, litanies — and confession available at all hours.^[53][54]

The contrast with the widespread dechristianization was striking: while many had fallen into indifference or Freemasonry, the reception of the sacraments at Saint Benno reportedly grew there spectacularly.^[55]

Works of Charity: Orphanage, Schools, the Poor

Hofbauer’s preaching was inseparable from concrete charity. In Warsaw, he founded an orphanage for abandoned boys — the Refuge of the Child Jesus — and several schools, including a trades school and a girls’ school, long the only one in the city.^[56][57] Faithful to his former trade, he himself returned to the oven to feed his children.^[58]

A famous anecdote reveals his boldness as a beggar for the poor. One day, begging in a tavern for his orphans, he was spat upon in contempt by a customer. Hofbauer wiped himself and calmly replied: “That was for me; now, what do you have for my boys?” Moved, the drinkers emptied their purses.^[59]

This inseparable union of proclaiming the faith and serving the poorest remained the hallmark of his entire work: in his eyes, one does not save a city by ideas, but by loving one by one those whom society abandons.^[60]

Twenty-One Years of Fruitfulness, Then Napoleonic Suppression (1808)

The work spread. Appointed head of the Congregation north of the Alps, Hofbauer founded houses in Germany and Switzerland; he personally trained young priests, often recruited from among his former students.^[61] The Redemptorist community, starting from a few members, had grown to number several dozen religious by 1808.^[62]

But the wars and partitions of Poland unleashed persecutions. After Prussian and then French occupation, Napoleon, hostile to congregations independent of the State, ordered the suppression of the house of Saint Benno. On June 9, 1808, the expulsion order was signed; on June 20, the religious were escorted to the fortress of Küstrin (Kostrzyn), imprisoned for a month, then dispersed, forbidden to return to Poland.^[63] The trial was all the heavier as Thaddée Hübl, his faithful companion, had died the previous year, in 1807.^[64]

At fifty-six, the apostle of Warsaw had lost everything. He set out westward again — toward Vienna, where a final and greater mission field awaited him.

Confessor and Spiritual Director of an Entire City

Returning to Vienna in September 1808, Hofbauer spent the last twelve years of his life there.^[65] Briefly arrested and released after three days, he initially served as chaplain in a small Italian church, then, from July 1813, as chaplain and spiritual director of the Ursuline convent.^[66][67]

There, quietly, he carried out what the Catholic Encyclopedia calls “a true apostolate among all classes of the capital, from Emperor Francis to the humblest”.^[68][69] In 1819, he finally secured the establishment of the first Redemptorist house in Vienna and founded a Catholic college.^[70][71] A sought-after confessor and preacher of burning simplicity, he revived the beauty of worship that Josephinism had stripped away—flowers, incense, candles, Mozart’s music in church—and made his modest lodging “a meeting and confession place for famous personalities as well as for common folk, youth, and the poor”.^[72]

The Romantic Circle of Vienna and Great Conversions

Hofbauer’s influence reached the intellectual elite. Around him formed a center of Catholic renewal that touched the Viennese Romantic circle. Among the souls he brought back or strengthened in the faith were the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel and his wife Dorothea (daughter of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn), the painter Friedrich von Klinkowström, Metternich’s secretary Joseph von Pilat, and especially the playwright Zacharias Werner, once Hofbauer’s adversary in Warsaw, who converted, became a priest, and one of Vienna’s greatest preachers.^[73]

From Werner comes one of the most beautiful tributes ever paid to the saint. Werner confided:

“I know only three men of superhuman energy: Napoleon, Goethe, and Clement Hofbauer.” — Zacharias Werner, as reported in the Catholic Encyclopedia^[74]

Against Josephinism and the State Church

Hofbauer’s struggle was not only spiritual: it was also for the freedom of the Church. At the time of the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), plans circulated to organize a German national Church largely subject to civil power, in line with Febronianism—a doctrine that sought to subordinate the Church to princes and national bishops against Rome—and the ideas of Vicar General Ignaz von Wessenberg.^[75] Through his influence and that of his disciples placed even within Metternich’s circle, Hofbauer helped to defeat these plans and preserve the Roman unity of German Catholicism.

Historiography recognizes his decisive role in the decline of Josephinism: the extinction of this state Church system was due, the Catholic Encyclopedia writes, “perhaps more than to any other man”, to Clement Hofbauer.^[76] The former Moravian baker thus shaped the religious destiny of Central Europe more than any minister.

“Courage, God guides everything”: The Spirituality of Abandonment

All of Hofbauer’s work rested on an absolute trust in Providence. Overwhelmed by his tasks, he was said to stand before the Blessed Sacrament repeating simply: “Lord, help! It is high time…”^[77] His motto was summed up in a few words that encapsulate a whole life given to God:

“Courage! God guides everything.” — Saying attributed to Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer^[78]

This spirituality of confident abandonment—inherited from Saint Alphonsus and his treatise on uniformity to the will of God—made Hofbauer a witness to the same holiness of spiritual childhood that would flourish in the following century. One does not change the world by calculation, he taught by example, but by letting oneself be led step by step by God’s will.

The Apparition to Zacharias Werner

Hofbauer’s glory did not end with his death. Hagiographical tradition reports several apparitions of the saint after his death; the most famous concerns Zacharias Werner, his former persecutor turned disciple. A few weeks before his own death in 1823, Werner reportedly announced from the pulpit his imminent end by recounting a nocturnal vision:

“Suddenly the room was illuminated with a light brighter than the sun, and I saw Father Hofbauer, my friend and my master, in all his splendor. He held in his hands a lily, an olive branch, and a sprig, and spoke to me thus: ‘Zacharias, come, come, soon you will come.’ Having said this, he disappeared. This apparition is not my imagination.” — Account attributed to Zacharias Werner, as reported by the Paradiso exhibition panel^[79]

Werner died a few weeks later, after the Epiphany of 1823.^[80] Far from being a pious ornament, this account, handed down by tradition without any verified act of the process to support it, illustrates the Catholic conviction that saints, having entered glory, remain close to those they loved on earth—and sometimes come to call them to Heaven.

The Death of the Apostle (March 15, 1820) and the Lifting of the Ban

At the beginning of March 1820, exhausted from his work, Hofbauer fell ill. He died in Vienna on March 15, 1820, at the age of sixty-eight.^[81][82] His funeral became a citywide mourning.

Providence crowned his struggle at the very moment of his passing: shortly before or after his death, Emperor Francis I, moved by the esteem that Pope Pius VII had inspired in him for Hofbauer, lifted the ban that had weighed on the Redemptorists and authorized their first foundation in Austria—the work the saint had so long desired but never lived to see.^[83][84] Upon learning of his death, Pope Pius VII declared, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“Religion in Austria has lost its principal support.” — Pius VII, upon hearing of Clement Hofbauer’s death^[85]

Initially buried in the cemetery of Maria Enzersdorf, his body was transferred in 1862 to the Redemptorist church of Maria am Gestade (Our Lady of the Shore) in Vienna, where it rests and is venerated.^[86][87]

Beatification (1888), Canonization (1909), Patron of Vienna

Hofbauer’s reputation for holiness only grew. He was beatified on January 29, 1888 by Leo XIII, then canonized on May 20, 1909 by Saint Pius X.^[88][89] In 1914, the same Pius X declared him patron of the city of Vienna, whose faith he had revived.^[90][91]

The Church thus recognized in him both the apostle who had reclaimed two capitals for Christ and the “second founder” of the Redemptorists, without whom the Congregation of Saint Alphonsus might never have emerged from Italy.^[92][93] He is today patron of Vienna by pontifical proclamation (Saint Pius X, 1914)^[94][95], invoked as patron of bakers on account of his former trade—a popular title—and of hermits, and counted among the patrons of Warsaw, where the Polish episcopate enrolled him in the catalogue of Polish saints in recognition of his twenty-one years of apostolate.^[96][97] Now established on five continents, the sons of Saint Alphonsus include figures such as Saint Gerard Majella and Saint John Neumann: all, in a sense, heirs to the missionary boldness of the former baker from Tasswitz.

Two centuries after his death, Saint Clement Mary Hofbauer remains the model priest for difficult times: a man without power or wealth who, by the sheer force of confession, charity, and trust in God, restored Christianity to a part of Europe.

• Saint Alphonsus de Liguori (1696-1787) — founder of the Redemptorists, of whom Hofbauer was the “second founder” by bringing the Congregation north of the Alps.
• Saint Gerard Majella (1726-1755) — the Redemptorist brother and miracle worker, another great son of Saint Alphonsus.
• Saint John Neumann (1811-1860) — Redemptorist bishop of Philadelphia, heir to Hofbauer’s missionary zeal.
• Saint Pius X (1835-1914) — the pope who canonized Clement Mary Hofbauer in 1909 and declared him patron of Vienna in 1914.
• Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783) — another figure of poor and pilgrim holiness of the 18th century.