This week in Christian history: ‘The Philadelphia Eleven,’ inquisitor murdered
Isaac Hecker becomes a Catholic – Aug. 2, 1844
This week marks the anniversary of when Isaac Hecker, a priest, author and founder of the missionary society known as the Paulist Fathers, was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
The child of German immigrants and raised in the Methodist tradition, Hecker had left organized religion in his teens and made a failed effort at political activism when he began to experience a series of visions in the 1840s.
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Eventually, Hecker decided to join the Catholic Church, with his baptism being performed at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, New York, by the Bishop John McCloskey.
Hecker would later become a priest and, in 1858, founded the Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle, also known as the Paulist Fathers, and founded the Catholic Publication Society, now called the Paulist Press.
In November 2023, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly to advance the canonization of Hecker, putting him one step closer to official sainthood.
