sent him to St. Andrew-on-Hudson in Hyde Park, New York, for his novitiate years in the society. In 1907, he was sent to Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, to teach humanities to freshmen for a semester, and then to Loyola University Maryland for another semester of teaching. He afterwards spent two years at Woodstock College in Maryland, where he received his master's degree in philosophy. LaFarge was plagued by ill health throughout his youth, and the completion of his M.A. degree left him severely exhausted. His superiors advised him that he probably couldn't support the rigors of life as a scholar. He moved into pastoral work, spending fifteen years (1911–26) ministering to mainly African-American and immigrant communities in rural St. Mary's County, Maryland, along Chesapeake Bay. His work here deeply shaped his attitude to race relations and to racism, which he considered a sin. He spoke out publicly against the conditions under which African-Americans lived, and he demonstrated special interest in furthering education for disadvantaged communities. In 1926 he founded an industrial school in southern Maryland for African-American boys, the Cardinal Gibbons Institute. Writings on racism and anti-Semitism In 1926, LaFarge left his pastoral work in Maryland to become assistant editor of America, a leading Jesuit weekly magazine in the United States. He went on to become its fifth editor-in-chief in 1944. Acknowledging that he was not a great administrator, he stepped down after four years and assumed the position of associate editor. All told, he worked on the magazine for 37 years, and he is credited with establishing a progressive editorial tone that the magazine has largely retained. He described himself as a priest who was also a working journalist, someone whose main task it was to study the events of the day and to connect them with deep moral and theological questions. His writings and newspaper articles on racism attracted broad public attention in the United States and abroad. In addition to his work for America, he published his writing in such publications as Commonweal, The Saturday Review, Liturgical Arts, Sign, and Catholic World, as well as turning out several dozen book reviews each year for various magazines and newspapers. In 1937, LaFarge published what would become his most important book on racism, Interracial Justice: A Study of the Catholic Doctrine of Race Relations. In it, he argued against then-prevalent ideas about the innate inferiority of African-Americans