Fr Ignatius Spencer (1799-1864), a relative of both Winston Churchill and Princess Diana, has been declared to have “lived a life of heroic virtue” by the Congregation for the Cause of Saints at the behest of Pope Francis.
Born George Spencer, he was brought up as a member of the English aristocracy, attending Eton college and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied divinity before becoming an Anglican priest. From the beginning Spencer’s piety was evident, and he is recounted in his time as a priest in Brington, Northamptonshire as attentively visiting sick and dying parishioners, and distributing food, clothes and money to the poor.
Spencer began to question his Anglican faith however, and under the influence of Catholic convert Ambrose Phillipps De Lisle, and his own studies of the Church fathers, converted to Catholicism, and was formally received into the Church in 1830. In doing so Spencer was sacrificing an income of £3,000 a year (equivalent to £340,000 in today's money) in exchange for a life of poverty, and as a Catholic priest in England, sectarian hostility.
He studied for the priesthood in Rome and returned to England following his ordination. Fr Spencer swiftly earned a reputation as a passionate and sometimes controversial preacher, and led a “Crusade of Prayer for the Conversion of England” which scandalised many in British society at the time.
In 1847 he entered religious life as a member of the Passionist Religious Order, taking the name “Ignatius” and living for a while with the Blessed Dominic Barberi (1792-1849). Fr Ignatius Spencer would spend the next 17 years continuously preaching and praying across Europe and the British Isles, ever seeking to restore the place of Catholicism in Britain. His health was poor due to the constant strain of work, preaching and charity, and contracted tuberculosis in a Staffordshire workhouse, eventually dying of a heart attack in a ditch in Carstairs Junction, Lanarkshire, on 1st. October 1864.
The humble circumstances of Fr Ignatius Spencer’s death reflected his life of poverty, and his devotion to the poor, including migrants from the Irish Potato Famine, who were living in caves dug out of slag heaps.
In 1973 his body was exhumed and it was discovered both that he had suffered from crippling arthritis that must have afflicted him through much of his later years of ceaseless preaching, and the preachers tongue was found to have escaped any sign of decay.
His cause was formally recognised in 2007 and following this latest decree it only awaits for two miracles to be confirmed by the Congregation for the Cause of Saints before he can be formally beatified.
With some material from CNS.
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