Cardinal Vaughan

Herbert Alfred Henry Vaughan, MHM (15 April 1832 – 19 June 1903) was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1892 until his death in 1903, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1893. He was the founder in 1866 of St Joseph's Foreign Missionary Society, known best as the Mill Hill Missionaries. He also founded the Catholic Truth Society and St. Bede's College, Manchester. As Archbishop of Westminster, he led the capital campaign and construction of Westminster Cathedral.

In 1871 Vaughan sent a group of Mill Hill priests to the United States to minister to freedmen. In 1893, the American branch of the society spun off, with Vaughan's permission, to form the Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, whose members are known as Josephites.

Early life and education

Herbert Vaughan was born at Gloucester, the eldest son of Lieutenant-Colonel John Francis Vaughan, of an old ''recusant'' (Catholic) family, the Vaughans of Courtfield, Herefordshire. His mother, Eliza Rolls from The Hendre, Monmouthshire, was a Catholic convert and intensely religious. All five of the Vaughan daughters became nuns, while six of the eight sons received Holy Orders and became priests.Snead-Cox, John. "Herbert Vaughan." The Catholic Encyclopedia
Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 18 March 2016 Two were later called as bishops in addition to Herbert: Roger became Archbishop of Sydney, Australia and John became titular bishop of Sebastopolis and auxiliary bishop in Salford, England. A nephew, Francis, became Bishop of Menevia, Wales.

In 1841 Herbert, the eldest, went to study for six years at Stonyhurst College, then to the Jesuit school of Brugelette, Belgium (1846–1848), and then with the Benedictines at Downside Abbey, near Bath, England.

In 1851 Vaughan went to Rome, and studied for two years at the Collegio Romano, where for a time he shared lodgings with the poet, Aubrey Thomas de Vere. He became a friend and disciple of Henry Edward Manning. Manning, a Catholic convert, became the second Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in Great Britain in 1850.

Career

Vaughan received Holy Orders at Lucca in 1854. On his return to England, he became Vice-President of St Edmund's College, at that time the chief seminary in the south of England for candidates for the priesthood. Since childhood, Vaughan had been filled with zeal for foreign missions. He convinced Cardinal Wiseman and the bishops to agree to a proposal to build a seminary in England that would train priests to serve on missions throughout the British Empire. With this goal, he made a fund-raising trip to America in 1863, from which he returned with £11,000.

In 1868, Vaughan became proprietor of ''The Tablet''. He wrote James McMaster, owner of the ''New York Freeman's Journal and Catholic Register'', ""No one can appreciate more highly than I do the great mission of the Catholic press in these days of steam and universal education."O’Neil MHM, Robert. "Cardinal Herbert Vaughan: the editor with a mission", ''The Tablet'', 16 March 2016
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He succeeded in opening St Joseph's Foreign Missionary College, Mill Hill Park

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