MISSIONARI DI SAN PAOLO APOSTOLO (PAULISTI). - It is the first American missionary society, and it was founded in Rome and in New York in 1858 by Fr. Isaac Thomas Hecker, together with Frs. Augustine F. Hewit, George Deshon, Francis A. Baker and Clarence A. Walworth. All of these, members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, because of controversies over the advisability of certain missionary methods, and desiring to devote themselves in a particular way to the conversion of non-Catholics in America, were dispensed from their vows so that they might attend to the formation of the new community.
The spiritual characteristic of the religious life of the Paulists is the practice of the greatest possible exercises both in private and in common, which the first fathers already observed while they were Redemptorists; and although they do not take religious vows, they follow the evangelical teaching as if the canonical bond prescribed it for them.
Their activity is primarily the conversion of non-Catholics, and embraces every branch of the Catholic apostolate: lectures, preaching, the press. For this reason they were the first to give life in America to the Catholic press (in the last three years no fewer than 15 million pamphlets have been distributed), in 1865 they published the first Catholic monthly periodical; in 1894 they introduced the use of mechanized means, with a trailer equipped as a chapel and lodging for two missionaries and fitted with loudspeakers; in the most populous districts, they have opened information centers with reading and lecture rooms, exerting themselves in every center in teaching special classes and private individuals who are non-Catholics; and at the desire of several bishops they have undertaken to direct, in many universities of large states, the "Newman Clubs" (organizations that integrate the spiritual and social life of the Catholic student under the guidance of the Paulist chaplain who is its spiritual director, protect the rights of Catholic students and are recognized as a representative of Catholicism within the university). In the various Paulist parishes the work is characterized by the particular ministry of preaching, of the education of children, of the relief of the poor, and of the decorum and dignity of the sacred liturgy. In 1926 the ancient church of St. Susanna in Rome was assigned to the Paulists for the American Catholics visiting or residing in the Eternal City. On July 13, 1929, Pius XI gave the decree of praise of the Society, and on Dec. 17, 1940 Pius XII definitively approved it together with the Constitutions. At present the M. of St. P. A. number 182 priests, 90 students and 21 novices.