Fr Urban Young CP, convert convert son of a Northern Ireland Presbyterian minister and VicePostulator of the beatification cause of the Ven Dominic Barbieri, “Herald of the Second Spring”, died on Saturday in a Manchester nursing home.
Fr Urban’s biographies of the Ven Fr Dominic – the lone Italian Passionist who gave missions in many parts of England and received Cardinal Newman into the Church – and of another celebrated Passionist, Fr Ignatius Spencer, did much to focus the attention of Catholics on the work of these pioneers for the conversion of England.
He drew up the petition for Fr Dominic’s beatification cause which was signed by the Hierarchy of England and Wales and presented to the Holy Father in 1945. He was an enthusiastic student of Cardinal Newman’s works from his pre-Catholic days, and preached at Littlemore on the occasion of the centenary of of Newman’s conversion.
Born in Belfast, Fr Urban was received into the Church in 1896 – when he was 21 – at the Passionists’ church in Ardoyne, and two years later entered the Passionist novitiate at Broadway, Worcs.
He was ordained in Rome in 1902 by the Cardinal Vicar.
Fr Urban conducted missions throughout Great Britain and Ireland. For six years he was Rector of St Saviour’s Retreat, Broadway, and St Mary’s Retreat, Camarthen.
From The Catholic Herald, November 11, 1955