In 1864, Fr Herbert Vaughan, the later Cardinal Vaughan, gained approval to build a missionary seminary in
England. On the 28th February 1871, after considerable difficulties had been overcome, the new seminary in
Mill Hill, London, was built and occupied under the patrimony of St Joseph.
Fr Vaughan's outstanding trust in St Joseph was thus rewarded. Mindful of St Joseph's finding of the stable
for Mary when no other roof was to be found, Vaughan, on his first approach to the landowners of the new
seminary, carried with him in a parcel a little statuette of St Joseph. When the landowner showed him the
door after refusing Fr Vaughan's negotiations, Vaughan asked if he might leave the parcel in the house
saying that he had some other business to attend to and he would collect it later in the day. When he
returned, the landowner, Mr Druce, had changed his mind and the land was for sale.
In 1871, this same statuette was solemnly installed in the simple little cloister of the seminary bearing
the inscription Oeconomus Domus Nostrae (Provider of our Home). The laying of the foundation stone
of the seminary was a very public occasion on the 19th March 1871, the Feast of St Joseph, with the
ceremony performed by Archbishop Manning. All that was required now was the funding to actually build and
finish the church!
The Holy Father had agreed that the Church would be the home of England's national shrine to St Joseph and
fittingly, on the feast of St Joseph in 1873, the church was officially opened. The debts were finally paid
off in March 1874, and the church was consecrated.
By a special indult of Pope Pius IX, Cardinal Manning was permitted to crown the statue of St Joseph,
which, with its altar, was declared the national shrine of Saint Joseph for England & Wales. This ceremony
was performed in the presence of the hierarchy of England and Wales on 13th April 1874, and the statue
became one of only a handful of crowned statues of St Joseph in the world.
The once thriving English and European seminary of St Josephs in Mill Hill, has now given way to the
reality that most of the Missionary Vocations are coming from Africa, only a few from England. The number
of vocations from Africa is testimony to the great work and witness of the Mill Hill Missionary Fathers and
the seminary of St Josephs. The Mill Hill site of St Joseph's closed on 1st July 2006. The new seminary of
the Mill Hill fathers will be built where their vocations are strongest - in Africa.
A big question mark hung over the shrine of St Joseph. The Mill Hill Fathers, eager to preserve their
patrimony and to continue to foster devotion to the Patron not only of their order but also of the Church
and of families, entrusted the shrine to the Benedictine monks of Farnborough. The shrine was transferred
early in 2008 to the south transept of the Abbey Church where it continues to be a focus of devotion.
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