and for the position that social disparities stemmed from the longstanding economic and cultural mistreatment of African-Americans at the hands of America's ruling classes. He also argued vigorously against segregation and the 'separate but equal' doctrine. A revised and expanded edition was published in 1943 under the title The Race Question and the Negro. One of the people impressed by LaFarge's arguments was Pope Pius XI, who invited him to secretly prepare an encyclical on "racialism," the topic he considered to be the "most burning" one of the time. The superior general of the Jesuits subsequently assigned two other priests, Fathers Gustav Gundlach and Gustave Desbuquois, to join LaFarge in this task. Entitled Humani generis unitas ('On The Unity of the Human Race') from its first three words, it was drafted during the summer of 1938 and given to Pius XI near the end of the year. It encompassed a general critique of modern ideas such as the state and race that have diminished human dignity and argued against the moral evils of racism and anti-semitism. It was not promulgated, however, because Pius XI died in early 1939, and his successor, Pope Pius XII, held it back, only taking a few extracts for use in some later encyclicals. For several decades it lingered in the obscurity of the Vatican Archives until the researches of Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky brought the story to light in the 1990s. In June 1934, LaFarge founded the Catholic Interracial Council of New York to combat racism; these councils proliferated across America over the next two decades, and in 1959 they merged to become the National Catholic Conference on Interracial Justice. As LaFarge's reputation grew, he was given other visible and important offices. At various times he was chaplain of the Society of the Catholic Laity, an officer of the Catholic Association for International Peace, vice-president of the American Catholic Historical Association, and chaplain of the Liturgical Society of Arts. In 1947, LaFarge was invited to give the prestigious Dudleian Lecture at Harvard; he chose for his topic "juridic wholeness," arguing that human rights must apply universally and not just to select groups. LaFarge's role as a champion of racial justice was sometimes marred by paternalistic attitudes and (in some people's eyes) by his anti-Communism. He did not play a major role in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, in