Augustine Francis Hewit

Augustine Francis Hewit (Fairfield, Connecticut, U.S.A., 27 November 1820 – New York, 3 July 1897) was an American Redemptorist priest, and second Superior General of the Paulist Fathers.

He was educated at the Fairfield public school, Phillips Andover Academy, and Amherst College, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi[1] He was graduated in 1839.

The conversion of John Henry Newman in 1845 gradually unsettled his belief in the validity of the claims of Anglicanism, and he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, 25 March 1846.

He then studied Catholic theology privately under the direction of Patrick N. Lynch, afterwards bishop of Charleston, and James A. Corcoran, subsequently professor at Overbrook Seminary, Philadelphia.

[2] As a Redemptorist he became Consulter to the Provincial and worked on parish missions with Isaac Hecker, Clarence A. Walworth, Francis A. Baker, and George Deshon, until with them he was dispensed from his religious vows by a decree of the Roman Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, 6 March 1858.

Under the leadership of Hecker all of these priests immediately formed the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle (Paulist Fathers) in New York, with a rule enjoining poverty and obedience with the obligations of the vows.

"Hewit's great scholarship, his balance of judgment, and his intellectual keenness gave to his counsels a weight and maturity that had no little influence in pruning the spirit and traditions of the community.

Under his direction, Walter Elliott gave the first regular missions to non-Catholics in the United States, and a new foundation of the institute was established in San Francisco.