Francis Asbury Baker
Francis Asbury Baker (March 30, 1820 – April 4, 1865) was an American Catholic priest, missionary, and social worker, known as one of the founders of the Paulist Fathers in 1858.
Life
Francis Asbury Baker was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 30, 1820, the son Samuel Baker, a prominent physician and University of Maryland Professor of Medicine. His paternal grandfather, William Baker was a German immigrant; his paternal grandmother, a woman of Irish origin. William Baker was a successful merchant. His maternal grandfather, John Dickins, was an English Methodist preacher, who died in Philadelphia during a yellow fever outbreak. His maternal uncle was Secretary of the United States Senate, Asbury Dickins.[1]
Dr. Baker was a great admirer of Francis Asbury, a popular Methodist bishop at that time, and named his son after his friend. Francis Baker graduated from Princeton University in 1839, and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1846. He was assigned at first as an assistant at St. Paul's Episcopal Church (Baltimore, Maryland), and six years later was named rector of St. Luke's Church (Baltimore, Maryland), where he became known as an eloquent preacher.[2]
Baker had great respect for the ideals held by John Henry Newman. His encounters with then Redemptorist Father Augustine Hewit and Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick of Baltimore as well as the intellectual ferment fostered by the Oxford Movement persuaded Baker to become Catholic in 1853, a conversion that created considerable stir at the time. He then changed his name to Francis Aloysius, in honor of Francis de Sales and St. Aloysius.[3] He was ordained a Redemptorist Priest three years later.[2] The Redemptorists presented week-long missions so that regular parish members and especially the poor could receive the religious instructions given by these traveling preachers.
Father Baker worked closely with Father Isaac Hecker on his missions and so after Hecker's expulsion from the Redemptorists and subsequent permission to found the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, granted by Pope Pius IX, Baker joined fellow missionaries Isaac Hecker, Augustine Hewit, Clarence Walworth, and George Deshon in leaving the Redemptorists to found the new society.[2]
Father Baker divided his time as a Paulist between assisting at St. Paul the Apostle parish in New York City and giving missions throughout the eastern states. Baker was a zealous and effective missionary. The strain of both tasks took its toll on Baker's fragile health and as early as 1861 he was forced to slow his activities because of throat ailments. THis was further complicated by pneumonia.[1] In early 1865 Baker contracted typhoid fever from his work with New York's poor and due in part to his already fragile health. He soon after died quietly surrounded by family and friends at the age of 45 just seven years after the founding of the Paulists.
He is buried at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia
Francis Asbury Baker — Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostle, born Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., 30 March, 1820; died 4 April, 1865. Father Baker was a son of Dr. Samuel Baker, a physician of note in Baltimore. He was graduated from Princeton College in 1839. His parents, whom he lost early in life, had been Methodists, but their surviving children joined the Episcopal Church. He took orders in that communion, and was ordained a presbyter in September, 1846. His career promised to be not only successful but brilliant. Possessed of many mental gifts, he had, moreover, refinement, wealth, and an engaging personality; he was deeply pious, thoroughly consecrated to his chosen work. He was assigned at first as an assistant at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Baltimore, and six years later was named rector of St. Luke's Church in the same city. He took rank at once as an eloquent preacher.
The Oxford Movement coincided with the years of his preparation and early ministry, and its influence in the United States resulted in the conversion of many distinguished men. It was not possible that an intelligent and sincere man like Baker could remain unmoved amid the awakening and the return to Catholic principles which the study of primitive and patristic history and theology caused. The severance of intimate ties cost him much, but he obeyed the call and in April, 1853, made his profession of faith. Attracted to the religious state, he entered the Redemptorist Order, was ordained priest in the Cathedral of Baltimore, 21 September, 1856, and began forthwith a laborious but most fruitful career as a missionary. The Redemptorists had inaugurated in 1851 the work of giving missions to the English-speaking Catholics of the United States, and the flood of immigration, then at its height, made the work exhausting and continuous. The missionary band included Fathers Hecker, Walworth, Hewit, and Deshon, all converts and all Americans, an unusually strong and varied combination, and to them Father Baker proved a welcome acquisition. He brought to his work the zeal of an apostle, a matured and persuasive eloquence, and the attraction of a character at once magnetic and saintly. Nor are these the words of mere eulogy. The recollections of the generation which listened to him, the judgment of competent critics, the numerous conversions, the abiding impressions he effected, the evidences which his printed sermons display of oratorical gifts — all entitle Father Baker to a high place among Catholic preachers.
In his sermons we find a blending of argumentation with appeal, a diction at once forceful and finished, and an apt and abundant use of Holy Scripture, which, combining with his earnest and digified delivery, gave to his message a powerful effect. Leaving the Redemptorists with Fathers Hecker, Walworth, Hewitt, and Deshon, for the purpose of organizing a special missionary community for English parishes, he shared with them the labour of founding the Paulist Institute. It was he who gave the impulse and established the tradition of rubrical exactitude and ceremonial splendour which have continued to be a characteristic of that community. He died of typhoid pneumonia contracted in ministering to the sick.
HEWIT, Memoir of the Life of the Rev. Francis A. Baker (New York, 1865); Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker (New York, 1896); WALWORTH, The Oxford Movement in the U.S. (New York, 1895).
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 McSorley, Joseph. Isaac Hecker and His Friends, Paulist Press, 1972, p. 132 ISBN 9780809116058
- Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Back to citation occurrence 2.2 Smith, Michael Paul (1907). "Francis Asbury Baker". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Back to citation Hewit, Augustine Francis. Life of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, The Catholic publication house, 1869