Jesuit Editor

The Jesuit weekly America, most influential Catholic publication in the U.S., last week called one of the most brilliant minds among U.S. Catholics to be its executive editor. He is the Rev. John LaFarge, S.J.

House of Artists. Tall, stooped, soft-spoken Father LaFarge is the Jesuit member of the famed artistic and literary LaFarge family. Painter John was his father. Architect Christopher Grant his brother, Novelist Oliver (Laughing Boy) his nephew. Father LaFarge decided to enter the priesthood after graduating from Harvard in 1901, went to Canisianum, the cosmopolitan Innsbruck seminary, now closed by Hitler, whose graduates Father LaFarge calls "the great bulwark against Naziism throughout eastern Europe."

Following his ordination in 1905, Father LaFarge became that rarity among Jesuits: a man admitted to the order as a priest, instead of first having to undergo the customary 14-year Jesuit training before being ordained. Like many another Jesuit, he is affable, witty, looks younger than his 62 years. He has been at Campion House, headquarters of America, since 1926.

House of Writers. Campion House, in upper Manhattan, is the only Jesuit "House of Writers" in the U.S. Houses of Writers are small but select communities to which Jesuit priests who have special talent as writers are assigned, to produce such literature as the time and country seem to require. Besides America, the Jesuit fathers at Campion House publish three other magazines, many a book and pamphlet.

Under Father LaFarge's editorial guidance, America will continue much as before, but may stress his own special interests a trifle more. Even for a Jesuit, these are remarkably varied. Two of them, rural life and the Negro, grew out of a pastorate in Maryland, where he was sent for his health.

A polylinguist who reads Russian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Polish, Czech and Slovak with equal facility, Father LaFarge is a U.S. authority on things Slavic. As befits a LaFarge, he helped to found and is now chaplain of the Liturgical Arts Society, the liaison body between Catholic craftsmen and their church. He also acts as religious adviser to a successful soap opera: General Mills' Bible-based Light of the World.

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