The first retreat at Aston Hall – 1842
The mission of _Stone.
Fr. Dominic and Fr. Amadeus were the two sent to England to plant the Congregation of the Passion in this realm. Of Fr. Dominic it is sufficient to say that he seemed like another Moses, destined for his office without a single qualification except zeal. He was of mean appearance, darker in hue than most Italians, the reverse of good-looking, with a thin squeaky voice, and a most barbarous manner of pronouncing the few words of English which he could articulate. His habits, manners, customs, training and notions were the very reverse of what could gain the approbation of Englishmen. Yet,
there was a something in him which reached their very hearts. He was not eloquent; but his sermons made converts, he was not very presentable but he attracted all, he was modest and retiring yet sent into the world by obedience. He was a mystery. He was a man of God. He saw that some of our customs did not suit England and he modified them or omitted them as the case might need. The Holy Rule he would not touch - even from the first day of their arrival in Aston - he and his companions with two postulants went through all the spiritual exercises of an organised community. A fervent Father, some years afterwards, wished to introduce something new. “No” replied Fr. Dominic 'you can never improve a rule, would that it could be kept in its integrity."
Father Amadeus was a native of the South of Ireland who left his own country when quite a boy and found his way somehow to Italy. It fared with him as it has with many others. The English language, brouge accent and all, as he spoke it in his youth had been buried away under layers of
Italianisms. He was a man of small capacity and consequently critical and unsatisfactory, unable to speak any language well, but given to fault-finding. There was thus a very dubious future on the horizon for these two Fathers as they studied English in Oscott whilst awaiting to enter their own house. Those who are unaccustomed to hear English pronounced after the manner of foreigners can scarcely restrain their laughter when they hear a man vociferating with energy on some grand mystery of religion and making some ridiculous blunder in the middle of it. Father Dominic had to encounter many difficulties in this way at the outset.
They entered Aston Hall on 17th February, 1842, and or the following day said the first Mass there. During the ensuing Lent, Fr. Dominic gave the people who attended the church a course of spiritual exercises. He was laughed at in the beginning; but toward the end, 'fools who came to scoff
remained to pray'. He received his first convert on the Good Friday of that year, and reconciled fourteen more to the Church in the course of a few months. Towards the month of July there were three added to the community, who afterwards became efficient members of it and good missionaries. These were Frs Gaudentius, Joseph, and Austin. The first has joined our American province and the other two are dead. Fr. Joseph was secularized a few years after Fr. Dominic's death and continued to work as a secular priest until 1877.
The Fathers went about in their habit and sandals to the no small amazement of their neighbours. Insults and mockeries followed their footsteps and a stray missile often found its way to their inoffensive bodies. Curious epithets were forged by designing men and fired with zest by the gamins of
the locality. These things only urged them on the more,"gaudentes pro nomine Jesu contumeliam pati".
Fr. Dominic perceiving that there were some catholics to be found in atone, resolved to give them the benefit of Mass. They were rather indifferent to their spiritual interests at first and when Fr. Dominic rented a room in the Crown Inn, where he said Mass, catechised and preached on Sundays, a bombshell seemed to have been cast into the ranks of the protestants. This room in the Crown Inn was the mustard-seed from which has sprung a spacious Church, a convent, a presbytery and school, with work for three priests. The first Mass was said in Stone on 1st Sunday of Advent, 1842.