Magnetization versus temperature and magnetic-field measurements, M(T, H-a), have been carried out to study the magnetic and critical properties of polycrystalline La1-xBaxCoO3 (x = 0.3 and 0.5) cobaltites. These compounds with the density of similar to 6.2 g/cm(3) crystallized in the R (3) over barc rhombohedral and Pm (3) over barm cubic structures, respectively. With an applied field H-a = 200 Oe, M(T) data have revealed that the samples with x = 0.3 and 0.5 exhibit the ferromagnetic-paramagnetic (FM-PM) phase transition at the Curie temperature points T-C = 202 and 157 K, respectively. At 4.2 K, the saturation magnetization (M-sat) decreases from 35.9 emu/g for x = 0.3-26.1 emu/g for x = 0.5. Particularly, the critical-behavior analyses in the vicinity of T-C reveal all samples undergoing a second-order phase transition, with critical exponent values (beta = 0.328 and gamma = 1.251 for x = 0.3, and beta = 0.331 and gamma = 1.246 for x = 0.5) close to those expected for the 3D Ising model. This proves short-range magnetic order existing in La1-xBaxCoO3. We believe that magnetic inhomogeneities due to the mixture of hole-rich FM regions (confined in the trivalent-cobalt hole-poor anti-FM matrix) and uniaxial anisotropy prevent long-range order in La1-xBaxCoO3.