Catholic Press Lord

"I'd rather be the editor of the Register than Cardinal Archbishop of New York," says Monsignor Matthew John Wilfred Smith, 63, of Denver, Colo. Monsignor Smith is not settling for too little. As editor and boss of the Catholic Register, he is not only the No. 1 press lord of Catholicism, but he runs the biggest and most successful chain of religious newspapers in the world. His national edition and 35 diocesan editions--all of them brightly edited, eight-column weeklies--have a combined circulation of 794,566.

Editor Smith's definition of religious news is broad. It embraces church announcements, speculative stories on leading candidates for high posts ("Four Red Hats Expected"), court decisions affecting the church, and Catholic views on U.S. foreign policy ("Catholic Women Attack Trade with Red Lands"). The paper is lightened with feature stories, e.g., the "filming of a 'miraculous' cure at Lourdes," comic strips and cartoons (Henry, Mister Breger), serials (Harold Lamb's Charlemagne, the Legend and the Man), crossword puzzles and fashions.

Last week in the Register's modern, $2,500,000 Denver headquarters, Editor Smith happily pointed to physical proof of the success of his journalistic formula. Into operation went a new, $650,000 press that can print 52,500 papers of 32 pages each in an hour.

Franco & Joe. The Register's Denver office, where Father Smith works in shirtsleeves and Roman collar, is a kind of Holy See of U.S. Catholic journalism. Local editors from all over the U.S. send in news, which Father Smith and his staff of 26 laymen and five priests edit.

Although the papers follow a straight-and-narrow path when there is clear church doctrine (e.g., birth control), Father Smith sets the policies when there is not. The Register is strongly prolabor, pro-United Nations, and pro-Franco Spain. "I do not endorse Franco because I like him," explains Editor Smith, "but because he is the lesser of two evils." The paper never endorses candidates in elections. Of Joe McCarthy, Editor Smith says: "I wouldn't compromise the bishops by taking a stand, although personally I think the man has done many good things, even though he has committed excesses."

Cash Register Smitty. Far from compromising the bishops, Editor Smith has amazed them ever since he first caught their eye as a young man. Born in Altoona. Pa., he put off plans for the priesthood in hopes of becoming a novelist, actually began his career as a proofreader on Altoona's Morning Tribune. The paper's editors took a fatherly interest in their bright young employee, not only taught him journalism but prescribed a rigorous course of self-education plus college extension courses. When his family moved to Denver, Neophyte Smith got a job as editor of the tiny (circ. 2.800) Denver Catholic Register, which was then privately owned, although it has since been taken over by the Denver diocese. Its property consisted of two battered desks, a deficit of $4,000 and a tattered mailing list. Editor Smith went to work to transform the paper. "I was only 22 then,'' said he, "and I decided on two plans--work and prayer."

By working what he calls "ungodly hours" while studying for the priesthood in his spare time, he built up the Register's circulation, stayed on after he was ordained. He won many new readers by forthrightly taking labor's side in struggles where Catholic unionists were involved. When the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan blossomed in Colorado after World War I, he blazed away at Klansmen, who dubbed him "Cash Register Smitty." The Klan tried to create a scandal by planting a woman in a Franciscan home for working I women, where he had a suite of separate 1 rooms. When Father Smith found that the "spy" had rummaged through his papers, I he talked to her, persuaded her to start instruction in Catholicism, and in a few I weeks converted her. The Klan battle gave the paper a big boost in Denver, earned Father Smith a national reputation as a scrappy editor.

Editor Smith still keeps tight editorial control over his staffers, peppers them with such instructions as "Say what you have to say and let it go at that" and "A good journalist never forgets the human juices in a story." Besides running the Register, he devotes two hours a day to Mass and priestly duties, also directs a Catholic journalism school. Only once has he been refused a journalistic request from his church superiors. When he asked to make the Register a national daily, he was turned down by his boss, Denver's late Bishop Tihen, with the reprimand: "You'd work yourself to death."

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