Herbert Cardinal Vaughan

At 40 years of age Herbert Alfred Henry Joseph Thomas Vaughan (1832–1903) was the youngest bishop ever to be appointed in Salford. He was a man of fine presence and simple but deep spirituality.

Herbert Vaughan was born at Gloucester, of an old Catholic recusant family, the Vaughans of Courtfield, Herefordshire. His mother, Eliza Rolls, was a Catholic convert and intensely religious.

All five of the Vaughan daughters became nuns, while six of the eight sons became priests. Three were later bishops: Herbert, Roger (Archbishop of Sydney) and John (auxiliary bishop in Salford).

Herbert studied with the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire and at Brugelette in Belgium, then with the Benedictines at Downside Abbey. In 1851 he went to Rome and studied for two years at the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici. Henry Edward Manning, later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, was a fellow student. Manning had much influence on Herbert Vaughan’s spiritual development and later career. With special dispensation because of fears for his health, Herbert was ordained priest at Lucca in 1854 at the age of 22.

On returning to England, he became Vice-Rector of St Edmund’s College, Ware, at that time the chief seminary in the south of England. He travelled widely in Europe and the Americas. In 1866 he founded the St Joseph’s Foreign Missionary College, usually known as Mill Hill. In 1871 Vaughan went to the United States to form a mission society whose purpose was to administer to freed Negro slaves. In 1893 the society was reorganized to form the US-based Josephite Society. Among its founders was the first African-American Catholic priest trained and ordained in the US. In 1868 Vaughan had started the Catholic Truth Society and in the same year bought and edited the Tablet, using its columns to spread the message of the Gospel. On arrival at Salford therefore he already had an impressive record of achievements.

Bishop Vaughan’s 20 years in Salford were years of intense activity. He founded more than 40 new missions.  He established a Seminary of Pastoral Theology, attached to the Cathedral, where young priests whom he recruited from England, Ireland, Holland, Belgium and Germany resided for their first year. He founded St Bede’s College in Manchester, started the Catholic Children’s Rescue and Protection Society and in 1883 established with Alice Ingham the Congregation of the Franciscan Missionaries of St Joseph.He also re-established the Catholic Truth Society.  He entered fully into the life of the civic community where he was a familiar figure at the Board of the Chamber of Commerce and co-founder of the Manchester Geographical Society. He became Archbishop of Westminster in 1892 and Cardinal the following year. There he was responsible for the building of Westminster Cathedral. The Cathedral opened with his Requiem Mass in June 1903.