San Diego's Buddy

When Pope Pius XI set up a new archdiocese with Los Angeles as its centre last month, and elevated Bishop John Joseph Cantwell to be archbishop, San Diego became a separate diocese (TIME, Oct. 5). Last week the Holy Father made known his choice for bishop of that see: a tall, husky, affable priest named Very Rev. Charles Francis Buddy, 49, rector of St. Joseph's Cathedral in St. Joseph, Mo.

Sorry to see Monsignor Buddy go to San Diego, which he has never before visited, will be a number of youngsters in St. Joseph's Cathedral School with whom he plays handball, baseball, basketball, marbles. Those sports Charles Buddy, son of a wholesale fruit merchant, learned in St. Joseph streets. His baseball improved when he was sent, like many another bright youth with a vocation and the backing of his bishop, to the North American College in Rome in 1909. Ordained in the St. John Lateran Basilica in 1914, he returned to St. Joseph, rose quickly in the shadow of its Cathedral. Monsignor Buddy sits on the municipal Board of Health, aids in Community Chest campaigns, founded northern Missouri's first Negro Catholic church, an Information Forum for people of all creeds, a riverfront shelter and cafeteria which the Government took over in 1934 as a transient relief bureau. In the shelter, whose motto was "We never ask questions," Monsignor Buddy did such good deeds as buying haircuts and hair ribbons for little girls who thanked him because: "We wanted to look nice for Sunday School at the Methodist Church tomorrow."

In Mexico City last week Catholics heard that the Pope might appoint Right Rev. Guillermo Tritschler, Bishop of San Luis Potosi, to succeed the late Indian-born Pascual Diaz as Primate and Archbishop of Mexico. Bishop Tritschler, born 58 years ago of German and Spanish ancestry, has shepherded the agrarian and silver-producing diocese of San Luis Potosi for five years. To patient Catholics in States where the Church is relentlessly persecuted, this appointment may well bring hope. San Luis Potosi is one of the few States where priests and nuns walk the streets in canonical garb unmolested. Its local strong man, Saturnine Cedillo maintains a potent private army, favors a moderate attitude toward the Church.

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