St. Clement Mary Hofbauer

St. Clement Mary Hofbauer was born in 1751 in Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic, the son of a poor grazier and butcher, and died at Vienna on 15 March 1820. After working for years as a baker and living for a time as a hermit, he was at last able, with the help of benefactors, to study for the priesthood, and in Rome he joined the newly founded Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, becoming the first Redemptorist to carry the order north of the Alps.

Sent to Warsaw, he labored there for some twenty years among the German-speaking Catholics and the poor, preaching, catechizing, and caring for orphans, until the Napoleonic suppression drove him out. Settling in Vienna, he became the tireless "Apostle of Vienna," a sought-after confessor and spiritual guide whose zeal and holiness helped to revive the faith of the city and to shape a generation of Catholic leaders. Canonized in 1909, he is honored as a patron of Vienna, and his memory is kept on 15 March.