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Joseph McBarron was born in Newark on 31 January 1908. He attended St. Augustine's Grammar School and St. Benedict's Preparatory School. After two years at Seton Hall College, he entered the novitiate at St. Vincent Archabbey as a candidate for St. Mary's Abbey, taking the religious name Maurus. After profession he studied Philosophy at St. Vincent before returning as a cleric to the new House of Studies at Delbarton. During the summers he did graduate studies in mathematics and physics at Catholic University and at Columbia. He was ordained a priest in 1934. The young priest was assigned by Abbot Ernest to the teaching staff at St. Benedict's Prep. in 1935.
Shortly after the beginning of World War II, Father Maurus was permitted by Abbot Patrick to join the Army Chaplain Corps, reporting for duty in March of 1942. He accompanied the 68th Medical Group to England and went with them in June of 1944, all the way through Normandy and Belgium to Germany. One of our favorite stories was of his celebrating Christmas Midnight Mass around the time of the Battle of the Bulge with some survivors huddled with their pastor in the cellar of a bombed-out building.
Maurus came back after the war and for a couple of years did some parish work and teaching, but his heart remained with the men he had served and served with. So in 1948 he returned to the Army, remaining on active duty as a Chaplain until his retirement with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1964.
There lay ahead a whole new career, in which Maurus would be at various times Dean of Studies, Prior, Pastor of the Abbey Parish, and-right up to the end - Confessor to many of the monks.
It turns out that his experiences in Europe were a kind of novitiate for larger battles. There was the pain and heart-break of seeing the riots of 1967 and the even worse ravages wrought by hopelessness, neglect, and the displacement of people in the years that followed. Then, starting in 1983, as City and Parish began to rise once again from the ashes, he was slowly immobilized by "Lou Gehrig's Disease". His wonderful spirit and sense of humor never left him, though, even when he could communicate with us only in a very limited way. Probably the best eulogy was pronounced by one of our urban homeless men: "Man, he was good to the people! "
Fr. Maurus died on 1 September 1987 and was buried in the monks plot in St. Mary’s Cemetery, East Orange.