The Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee is reviewing reports of a miracle which, if verified, could advance the cause for beatification of Father Isaac Hecker.

Bishop Richard Stika has appointed a commission to investigate the reported miracle, the diocese announced. No further details about the reported miracle have been disclosed. "The inquiry is highly unusual and is the first time any kind of Catholic religious miracle has been investigated in the Diocese of Knoxville," the diocese said in a press release.

Father Isaac Hecker (1819-1888), the founder of the Paulist Fathers, devoted himself to evangelization through preaching, public speaking, and the media. Born in New York, he entered the Catholic Church in 1844 and was ordained a Redemptorist priest in 1849. Tireless in his work to convert Americans, he was expelled from the religious order, but won the support of Pope Pius IX, who authorized him to found the Paulists. Later he became a key figure in the Americanist controversy—although his supporters insisted that Father Hecker never held the views condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae.

In 2008 Cardinal Edward Egan of New York opened the cause for Father Hecker’s beatification.


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