BAINES, PETER AUGUSTINE

BAINES, PETER AUGUSTINE. - Apostolic vicar of Western England, b. at Kirkby (Liverpool) on 25 June 1786, d. at Prior Park on 6 July 1843. In 1798 he moved to Hanover to pursue his ecclesiastical studies at the Benedictine abbey of Lambspring. He remained there until 1803, the year in which the abbey was secularized and occupied by the Prussians. Having returned to his homeland with his confrères, he was received by Lady Anna Fairfax at Ampleforth, where the Benedictines of Lambspring founded the well-known college of St. Lawrence. In June 1804 B. took the habit of St. Benedict. Five years later he was ordained a priest. Owing to his particular gifts as a preacher and controversialist, he was chosen in 1817 for the mission at Bath. In 1823 he became coadjutor to Bishop Collingridge, apostolic vicar of the Western District, and was consecrated titular bishop of Siga, in Mauretania. Having come to Rome in 1826, he preached with great success in the church of the Gesù and was especially dear to Pope Leone XII, who appointed him his domestic prelate and assistant at the papal throne. When Bishop Collingridge died in 1829, B. returned to England and succeeded him in the vicariate of Western England, which he retained until his death. Cardinal Wiseman, on the basis of highly authoritative testimony, states that Bishop B. “was the person intended, in the plans of Leone XII, to be the first English cardinal”; but the sudden death of Pope Della Genga in 1829 nullified this intention.