Raised in the Depression era in a wealthy and distinguished family, he went to Harvard University and then served in the Navy as a medic during WWII. MacNutt converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult and entered the Dominican Order to become one of its outstanding preachers and writers. As a Dominican monk he first encountered the Spirit-filled healing ministry of Agnes Sanford at a CFO camp in 1967 where Agnes was the principal speaker. They formed a strong friendship and she mentored him into the healing/deliverance ministry. It was MacNutt who introduced the term “inner healing” to what was then called “the healing of memories.” He personally had a strong anointing for healing prayer and during the course of his frequent healing conferences prayed for many thousands of persons.

MacNutt became perhaps the most important leader of the Catholic Charismatic renewal from 1974-1980, serving many offices in that movement. His presence in flowing Dominican robes during the mega-rallies of the 1970s charismatic renewal is a cherished memory for many who attended. However, his marriage to Judith in 1980 abruptly ended his association with the Catholic Charismatic renewal and resulted in his excommunication. He then focused on his writing and teaching ministry for a more ecumenical reach, and developed CHM as a great teaching institution.

The website for Christian Healing Ministries is: www.christianhealingmin.org.

For more information about Francis MacNutt see Francis MacNutt’s Biography.
For more information about Judith MacNutt see Judith MacNutt’s Biography.

Update: Francis MacNutt  passed away on January 12, 2020. He was 94 years old.

Francis: As far back as I can remember I believed in God. I went with my dad to church every Sunday. I was always serious about God and very intent on wanting to do His will.

David: How did that evolve into a call to be a Catholic priest?

Francis: It took a little time. I never was sure what I wanted to do with my life. It was only after graduating from Harvard and from Catholic University that Thomas Merton’s book, Seven Story Mountain, helped persuade me to become a priest. I was ordained a Dominican in 1956.

David: As a Roman Catholic priest, how did you become involved with Agnes Sanford and the healing ministry?

Francis: In 1967, I met Agnes Sanford at “The Camp Farthest Out” in Tennessee. I was fascinated with the idea that God still healed today and she prayed for me to receive the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” She also prophesied that God would use me to bring healing back to the Catholic church, which largely came true.

A year later, I attended a school of pastoral care that was taught by Agnes Sanford, Tommy Tyson and John Sandford. I learned a lot in those days.

I then began to share the news about the baptism of the Holy Spirit while giving talks to different groups, especially to priests, and there would always be some who would ask to receive prayer for it.

Eventually, I became the president of the Catholic Homiletic Society in St. Louis—an organization of 1,100 Catholics. While there, I simply followed Matthew 10, where Jesus said to preach that the kingdom of God is at hand, to heal, and to cast out evil spirits. I wrote and spoke about this quite openly, and many asked me to pray for them.

David: Did your bishop approve?

Francis: It was amazing how well it was received. Many sisters got baptized in the Spirit during weekly meetings that were often attended by as many as 300 people. I’d give talks on the baptism of the Spirit, they’d receive it and take it back to their parishes. By the time I left St. Louis in 1980 there were 60 priests involved in 100 charismatic Catholic prayer groups in the city. It was extraordinary.

David: Were your audiences all Catholic or was it a mix?

Francis: It was a mix, but mostly Catholic. Frequently, however, we had ecumenical teams, often with Tommy Tyson. Ruth Carter Stapleton worked on a number of those teams before her brother got elected president. In the 1970s I took extensive trips to Latin America and Africa – perhaps 30 countries in all. At one retreat in Australia, almost all of the 220 priests asked for the baptism of the Spirit.

David: When did you write your first book?

Francis: I wrote Healing in 1974, which has gone on to sell about a million copies.

David: Judith, how did you meet Francis?

Judith: I was living in Jerusalem, running a house of prayer called Jerusalem House. My pastor, Dr. Robert Lindsey, was a respected scholar in the Southern Baptist Convention who had just experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He encouraged me to go to a meeting to hear Francis.

Francis MacNutt has written an insightful book about how the ministry of healing has been greatly diminished in the Church for centuries (almost 1600 hundred years!). Healing was a major part of the ministry of Jesus and His disciples, the record of which takes up about a third of the Gospels, not to mention the book of Acts. Throughout, MacNutt emphasizes the importance of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, not just for healing ministry, but for every ministry.

MacNutt shows how healing ministry flourished for the first three centuries, and was then sidelined by nominal Christianity beginning with the Constantinian era. He details how ecclesiastical structures and the developing clergy/laity distinction quickly began to remove healing ministry from the hands of the people—it became a work for the “super-spiritual,” and few could qualify to perform it (some of the Desert Fathers, for example). Healing shortly became the province of relics and shrines—and the clergy no longer had to deal with embarrassing questions when healings did not occur at their hands.

He also talks about how the purpose of God’s love and compassion in healing had been severely neglected in the intervening centuries. Healing ministry became viewed strictly as a validation of truth, but was no longer necessary for faith. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” became the watchword, and interest in the display of God’s love through healing fell by the way.

MacNutt discusses how the Platonic split between body and soul, and the severe doctrines of the Manichees (i.e. the intrinsic evil of the flesh, and especially of sexuality) further eviscerated the ministry of healing. During the middle ages, the development of the “divine right of kings” generated “the Royal Touch,” and healing ministry was limited, by law, to the monarchs of England and France.

Although a committed Roman Catholic, MacNutt believes that the Reformation did not extend far enough in its scope—the Reformers continued to ignore the reality of healing ministry. Oh, they recognized that there had once been such a thing in Jesus’ day, but now that time was past, and the ministry had ceased. So much for reformation!

But all along the way, there have been healing ministers and ministries among the people, arising in times of revival and when people were desperate for a healing touch from God. In the last 300 hundred years there have been some glimpses of healing ministry arising again, then faltering. Then it began trending upward in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mostly among the pentecostally inclined. These came to include the charismatic and “third wave” movements late in the mid-to-late 1900s, about which MacNutt writes from personal experience (the appendix is a testimony of how he received the baptism, or “release” of the Holy Spirit, into his life and ministry).