page_title: Isaac Hecker
section_title: Founding of the Paulist Fathers
hierarchical_section_title: Isaac Hecker / Founding of the Paulist Fathers
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of Isaac Hecker
context_page_description: Isaac Thomas Hecker was an American Roman Catholic priest and founder of the Paulist Fathers, a North American religious society of men; he is named a Servant of God by the Catholic Church.
  Hecker was originally ordained a Redemptorist priest in 1849. Then, with the blessing of Pope Pius IX, he founded the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, now known as the Paulist Fathers, in New York on July 7, 1858. The Society was established to evangelize both believers and non-believers in order to convert America to the Catholic Church. Father Hecker sought to evangelize Americans using the popular means of his day, primarily preaching, the public lecture circuit, and the printing press. One of his more enduring publications is The Catholic World, which he created in 1865.
  Hecker's spirituality centered largely on cultivating the action of the Holy Spirit within the soul as well as the necessity of being attuned to how He prompts one in great and small moments in life. Hecker believed that the Catholic faith and American culture were not opposed, but could be reconciled.
context_section_description: During his months in Rome, Isaac had determined that the best way to serve the church in the United States was to establish a congregation of priests to labor for the conversion of his native land. Pope Pius approved his plan and encouraged him to take the steps necessary for its realization. "To me the future looks bright, hopeful, full of promise," he wrote home, "and I feel confident in God's providence and assured of his grace in our regard."
  The outcome was that Hecker, George Deshon, Augustine Hewit, Francis Baker, and Clarence Walworth, all of whom were American Redemptorists, were permitted by Pope Pius IX in 1858 to form the separate religious community of the Paulists.
  Hecker returned to America from Rome and gathered his American friends Fathers Hewit, Baker, and Deshon to plan their congregation.  Archbishop John Hughes accepted the men into his New York archdiocese, giving them a parish on 59th Street for their home. The five men decided on calling themselves the "Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle." The priests, popularly known as the Paulists, conducted parish missions and retreats for non-Catholics.
  Between 1867 and 1869, Hecker, directly addressing Protestants from lecture platforms, delivered more than 56 lecture series, traveling from Boston to Missouri, from Chicago to Hartford. During one Western tour, he traveled more than 4,500 miles and spoke to more than 30,000 people, two-thirds of whom were non-Catholics.  Hecker's first biographer, Father Walter Elliot, wrote: "We can never forget how distinctly American was the impression of his personality. We heard the nation's greatest men then living. ...Father Hecker was so plainly a great man of this type, so evidently an outgrowth of our institutions, that he stamped American on every Catholic argument he proposed. ...Never was a man a more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, entirely Catholic." Another writer quipped, "He is putting American machinery into the ancient ark and is getting ready to run her by steam."
  In April 1865, adding the written word to his speaking campaign, Isaac launched The Catholic World, a monthly magazine. A year later he founded the Catholic Publication Society (now the Paulist Press) for the purpose of disseminating Catholic doctrine on a large scale, primarily for non-Catholics. In 1870, he established The Young Catholic, a magazine for young boys and girls.
  In 1869-70, Hecker attended the First Vatican Council as a theologian for Bishop James Gibbons of North Carolina. On the trip, he visited Assisi, home of St. Francis. "Francis touched the chords of feeling and aspiration of the hearts of his time, and organized them for united action," Hecker wrote in his journal.
  Returning home in June 1870, the 55-year-old Hecker, full of enthusiasm, looked forward to resuming his American apostolate. But instead he was stricken with painful, chronic leukemia. So rapidly did the disease progress that by 1871 he could not continue his work as Paulist director, pastor, lecturer, and writer. Hecker had great difficulty accepting that the God whom he served would allow him to be cut down in mid-career. When he left for Europe to seek a cure, he told his Paulist brothers: "Look upon me as a dead man. ...God is trying me severely in soul and body, and I must have the courage to suffer crucifixion."  He wandered from one European spa to another, worn in body and sorely tried in spirit, struggling to believe that God was as much at work in him now as he was on the lecture platform.
  He spent the winter of 1873-74 aboard a boat on the Nile River; the sail benefited him immensely. "This trip," he wrote, "has been in every respect much more to my benefit than my most sanguine expectations led me to hope. It seems to me almost like an inspiration."
  In 1875, the American Paulists invited Father Hecker to return to their midst. He came back and started to work once more, although on a limited basis.  For 13 more years he exerted his constantly diminishing strength to bring Catholicism to the hearts of his fellow Americans
caption: Hecker in 1887
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