On Saint Gaspar del Bufalo’s unrelenting devotion to the Precious Blood of Christ

Saint Gaspar del Bufalo (Jan 6, 1786-Dec 28, 1837) never intended to establish a religious society¹ in the Church. He simply wanted to bring souls to Jesus Christ. But Gaspar’s example inspired many of his brother priests to follow him. Eventually, he gave a name to his group of followers: the Society of the Precious Blood. His choice of that seemingly uncontroversial name caused Gaspar one of his many challenges in life.

Although Gaspar was born in the home of an Italian prince, his father was merely the assistant cook at the prince’s household in Rome. Gaspar’s parents were poor, but they were also devout, honest Catholics who worried about their young son’s fragile health. Over the years, they recognized that Gaspar was a prayerful boy and a hardworking student, although he could also be impulsive and short-tempered. But he recognized his own weaknesses and asked for God’s help in correcting them. As a teenager, he decided to pursue the priesthood.

Gaspar studied hard to become the learned priest that he believed the lay faithful deserved, and he took private lessons to become a better preacher. Even before ordination, he found ways to teach the faith to those who fell through the cracks of typical parish life: abandoned children, day laborers, and farm workers who came to Rome to sell their produce. Although Gaspar was, by nature, a shy and timid man, he had a knack for inspiring and organizing others. Soon, other seminarians joined him in his outreach to the poor.

Only a year after Gaspar had been ordained, political matters almost brought an end to his priesthood and his life. As the Emperor Napoleon and his troops took control of Italy, Gaspar and other Italian priests were ordered to take an oath of allegiance to the emperor. Twenty-four-year-old Gaspar refused to do so.

He and the many priests who refused the oath were arrested and deported to remote prisons. The pope himself was also arrested and pressured by Napoleon to capitulate, while Gaspar and other faithful priests barely survived years in isolation in filthy, pest-infested prison cells. Finally, when Napoleon was defeated in battle in 1814, Gaspar and the other priests were set free. Gaspar returned to Rome.

Pope Pius VII was so impressed with the gifted young priest that he assigned Gaspar to preach missions in the city and surrounding countryside. After all, the Italian people needed to be brought back to God and their faith after years of war. Under Gaspar’s lead, a new band of missionaries was formed.

At one point, Gaspar volunteered his missionaries to serve in a particularly dangerous situation. Some remote areas of Italy were overrun with bandits, with ordinary citizens caught in the middle of the fighting. Gaspar and his priests established homes for themselves in some of these areas. Then they preached in the streets and taught children. They even went out into the hills to directly invite these outlaws to return to the Church. Within only a few years, their efforts were so successful that these villages were no longer considered unsafe.

Sadly, Gaspar had a tumultuous relationship with the popes who reigned during the remainder of his life. This was partially due to the dramatic political changes at the time. It took decades for Italy to transition from being “the papal states” to becoming “the kingdom of Italy,” and this was accomplished only with great violence and over the opposition of Popes Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, and Gregory XVI.

Although Gaspar was a faithful priest, he was unafraid to point out the abuses that he saw occurring at the time within the Church and her government. To some Church leaders, this looked like rebellion during a time of war; to Gaspar, this was simply the duty of an honest son of the Church.

Because of his forthrightness (and perhaps out of jealousy over his success), Gaspar was repeatedly persecuted by some Church leaders. At one point, criticism of his leadership was so intense that he offered to step down as leader to save his society from being disbanded. Fortunately, a few meetings with Pope Leo XII completely resolved the matter. Then his enemies tried the unusual tactic of trying to get him promoted to the rank of bishop, hoping they could get him sent out of the city of Rome. He declined that honor. After the death of each pope, Gaspar’s critics smeared his reputation with the same old arguments, and Gaspar had to work hard to regain trust with the new pope. Because of this opposition, the Rule for his order was not approved until after Gaspar’s death.

But one of his opponents’ most persistent criticisms was the name of his order. These critics complained that “Precious Blood” was not a traditional devotion. They demanded that Gaspar change the name of his order, and he refused.

After all, Gaspar did not propose this title for his order for a merely personal reason. Devotion to the Precious Blood of Christ is rooted in the Church’s tradition, going back to the Last Supper itself, as well as the writings of Saints Peter (1 Pt 1:2, 19), Paul (Rom 3:25, Eph 1:7), and John (1 Jn 1:7, Rev 1:5). While there had been arguments in the fifteenth century concerning precise theological explanations of Christ’s Blood, Gaspar had good reasons to tell his critics the following:

If other Institutes take it upon themselves to disseminate this or that devotion, [the Society of the Precious Blood] must undertake to spread the one devotion which contains within it all of the others, that is: the price of our Redemption.²

Gaspar was not the only priest who recognized that devotion to the Precious Blood could help Catholics deepen their faith. The nineteenth-century Oratorian priest Fr. Frederick Faber wrote an entire book devoted to the topic. He pointed out that:

It is from the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ alone that our salvation comes.³

And he said that:

Through the instrumentality of the Precious Blood, the Holy Ghost is everywhere and always making all things productive of sanctity in some measure and degree. Sanctification may be called the production of heavenly beauty in the world. It is the filling of nature with the supernatural.⁴

What does the Blood of Christ teach us about Jesus Christ, as compared to the Body of Christ? In our own time, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, offered this explanation, which is a useful reflection for any Catholic during Mass:

With respect to the presence of Christ in the two separate species of the bread and wine, it is legitimate to associate with the Body of Christ first and foremost the revealed truth of His substantial presence and with the Blood of Christ first and foremost the truth of His sacrifice through which the world is freed from Original Sin and men and women are redeemed from their sins.⁵

By the end of his life, Gaspar del Bufalo had traveled to cities and villages all over central Italy. He had spent thousands of hours preaching to ordinary Catholics through parish missions and spiritual retreats. Tens of thousands of people at a time had come to hear him speak, with many saying that it seemed like Fr. Gaspar was talking directly to them. One of those listeners, Saint Maria de Mattias, was so inspired that she decided to found the female branch of his order, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ.

As Gaspar inspired thousands of people over decades, there was one theme that he seemed to find most effective in reaching hearts and souls with a love of God and a desire for conversion. That theme was the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.

As Gaspar put it, “In this devotion we have the treasures of Wisdom and of Holiness; in it are our comfort, our peace, and our salvation.”⁶ Or as the Missionaries of the Precious Blood website summarizes it today: “Christ’s shedding his Blood was for St. Gaspar and is for us the sign of God’s great love for all people.”

What could be contrary to the faith about promoting Christ’s love for His people, strikingly shown in His willingness to pour out every drop of His blood for us on Calvary?

Saint Gaspar del Bufalo died at the age of fifty-one as a result of the illness he contracted while caring for the sick during an outbreak of cholera in Rome. He is remembered on the Church’s calendar on December 28. That would be a fitting day for Catholics to pray the Litany of the Precious Blood, pick up a copy of Fr. Faber’s book, and beg the Lord to call more Catholics to reflect on the love Jesus Christ showed for us through His Precious Blood.⁷

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