CLEMENTE MARIA HOFBAUER, saint. — Born on 26 December 1751 at Tasswitz (Austria), died in Vienna on 15 March 1820. After a difficult and laborious youth, he lived for some time as a hermit, and then attended the University of Vienna (1780–84). At Tivoli, in the hermitage of Madonna di Quintiliolo, he took the name C. M. (his name was Giovanni). In 1784, in Rome, he entered the Congregation of the Redemptorists; he was ordained a priest at Veroli on 29 March 1785. Shortly afterward he returned to Austria to propagate his Congregation there, but, impeded by Josephinism, he went to Poland, where he found a broad field of activity, and the college of S. Bennone (Warsaw) soon became an educational and missionary center. From 1788 C. M. was vicar general of the transalpine branch of his Congregation.
Opposed by Napoleon, he was expelled from Poland, arrested, and confined. From 1808 he lived in the Austrian capital, earning the title of “apostle of Vienna.” Indeed, he displayed admirable activity among the people, the aristocracy, and the educated classes. His numerous disciples, among them the most renowned leaders of Austrian Romanticism (Schlegel, Veit, Werner, Müller, Pilat, Eichendorff, the future bishops Rauscher, Ziegler, Zängerle, and many others), created the conditions for the Austrian religious renewal that finally overthrew Josephinism and restored the Catholic character of the people. On the day of his death, the emperor admitted the Congregation of the Redemptorists into the Austrian States; from Vienna, precisely through the work of the Saint’s disciples, it began its worldwide expansion. In 1886 C. M. was beatified and in 1909 canonized; he is the patron saint of Vienna.