Francis Asbury Baker
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University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
Professor of Medicine, Baker graduated from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1839, was ordained as an Episcopal
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
Deacon
Deacon
Deacon is a ministry in the Christian Church that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions...
in the early 1840s and seemed destined for a career as a respected Protestant clergyman. His encounters with then Redemptorist Father Augustine Hewit and Archbishop Francis Kendrick (of Baltimore) as well as the intellectual ferment fostered by the Oxford Movement
Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose members were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy...
persuaded Baker to become Catholic in 1853, a conversion that created considerable stir at the time. He was ordained a Redemptorist Priest three years later. Father Baker worked closely with Father Isaac Hecker
Isaac Hecker
Isaac Thomas Hecker was an American Roman Catholic Priest and founder of the Paulist Fathers, the North American religious society of men; he is named a Servant of God by the Catholic Church....
on his missions and so after Hecker’s expulsion from the Redemptorists and his subsequent permission to found the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, granted by Pope Pius IX
Pope Pius IX
Blessed Pope Pius IX , born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest-reigning elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal...
, Baker joined fellow missionaries Isaac Hecker
Isaac Hecker
Isaac Thomas Hecker was an American Roman Catholic Priest and founder of the Paulist Fathers, the North American religious society of men; he is named a Servant of God by the Catholic Church....
, Augustine Hewit, Clarence Walworth, and George Deshon
George Deshon
George Deshon was an American Paulist Father.-Life:...
in leaving the Redemptorists to found the new society.
Father Baker divided his time as a Paulist between assisting at St. Paul the Apostle parish in New York City and giving missions throughout the eastern states. A zealous and effective missionary, Baker worked fervently for the conversion of America. The strain of both tasks took its toll on Baker’s fragile health and as early as 1861 he was forced to slow his activities because of throat ailments. In early 1865 Baker contracted typhoid fever from his conversion work with New York’s poor and due in part to his already fragile health. He soon after died quietly surrounded by family and friends at the age of 45 just seven years after the founding of the Paulists. He is buried at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.