He studied under Cardinals Johann Baptist Franzelin, Camillo Tarquini, and Perrone while at the university, received a BC and DD and was present during the First Vatican Council and taking of Rome in 1870. In 1873, he was ordained as a Catholic priest at St. John Lateran and returned to England to teach philosophy and religious history at Birmingham (or Olton) Theological College. He also served as its vice president from 1873 to 1877 before moving on to his old alma mater as a professor of divinity at Oscott College until 1880. Three years later, Barry moved to Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire where he remained a longtime resident for over 20 years. A year or two after arriving in England, Bary also became a regular contributor to the "Dublin Review" and later the "Contemporary Review", the "Edinburgh Review", and the "Nineteenth Century"; he published around 70 essays in various periodicals during his lifetime. In the 1890s he was a friend of Count Stenbock, Lionel Johnson and Robert Ross. (see W.B. Yeats letters, vol.2).