(Editor’s Note: The following article on Father Francis X Farmer, S.J., who celebrates his 90th birthday Oct. 14 was written by Anthony Delisi, O.C.S.O., of Holy Spirit Abbey at Conyers. We think it will interest readers).

I was born at Conyers, Georgia, October 14, 1877, and while still very young my parents moved to Covington, where my father engaged in the mercantile business and where I passed the years of my childhood and young manhood.”

This is the opening sentence of the small booklet written in 1931 by Father Francis X. Farmer, S.J., entitled MY CONVERSION. Father Farmer graduated from Emory College in 1898 and was sent to China as a Methodist missionary in 1901 where he devoted himself for two years in mastering the Chinese language. He made it a point to adopt the native customs including the dress. In 1903 he married Martha A. Beeson, who was also a Methodist missionary and together they worked in the interior of China. After his wife’s death in 1911, he wrote her biography A MISSIONARY HEROINE OF KWANG SI, CHINA. Many of the episodes of this early period of his life are recorded within its pages.

Father Farmer’s interest in Catholicism began with the reading of a book by John Henry Newman. He says in his booklet:

“UP TO THIS POINT I had only Protestant books and now, for the first time, I opened a book written by a Catholic; a Catholic to whom I owe more gratitude than I shall ever be able to express. I refer to John Henry Newman, and the book is his famous Apoligia”.

After his return to the States, he started to take instructions in Atlanta. He says of this period:

I visited often the Sacred Heart Church on Ivy Street and that of the Immaculate Conception on Hunter Street. Of how blessed to steal in there for prayer, where, surrounded by the sacred memorials of my Lord’s Passion and Death, I could find that rest and refreshment which He has promised to those who are burdened! Above all, what a privilege to kneel before the High Altar, where He as a King upon His throne, was actually, really and bodily present in the Blessed Sacrament.

He was received into the Catholic Church on May 6, 1915 by Bishop Keily at the Cathedral in Savannah. Eight months later, he entered the Society of Jesus at Cantebury, England. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1922 he was sent back to China where he worked until 1947 as a parish priest in Shanghai. Since then, Father has been stationed at Loyola University, Los Angeles, Calif.

He celebrated his 50th year as a Jesuit in 1966. Then it was reported by the Catholic press that he had received all the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. He says: “The report in some Catholic papers that I had received Extreme Unction was not true. So far, I have never received that sacrament.”

For the past year and a half, Father Farmer has been a correspondence with a monk of the Abbey of the Holy Spirit, which was founded a few miles outside of his home town of Conyers. It is hoped that Father Farmer will not object to the printing of the following extracts from his letters since they are relevant to our times.

ECUMENISM:

It is surely astounding to see so much taking place in Georgia for the Ecumenical Movement. Some years ago, I could never have believed that such cooperation possible between Catholics and Protestants to bring about Church unity. It is as you say, the work of the Holy Spirit.

CHINA:

What turmoil and chaos in China! Where will it all end? God alone knows…I am too old and shall not live to see His (God’s) victory, but you younger men will be here to praise, thank, and glorify Him for His Wisdom and power. All that Christians have suffered, are actually undergoing now, will not be in vain.

CELIBACY (MARRIED CLERGY):

As to celibacy, I fully believe that all priests in the Catholic Church should not be married, but give their whole love and service to Jesus Christ and the salvation of souls. As a Protestant minister and Missionary in China, I was married most happily so, as you will see in reading the biography of my wife. St. Paul sums up the whole question in I Cor. 7th chap. And I firmly agree with him. I am glad our Holy Father, Pope Paul, has said that celibacy will be maintained in the Latin Church.

LITURGICAL CHANGES:

You ask about Liturgical changes etc., if I am “able to keep up with them”. Yes, and am anticipating with pleasure the time when we shall have all the Mass in English…

SUN-SET (From a letter of April 24, 1967):

I am in the sunset days of a long life, tired and worn out. I am, as far as I know, the oldest man in California Province of the Society of Jesus. Life’s sun is very near the Western Horizon, and will soon sink below the line. Kindly pray, that it may rise in land towards which I have been traveling a long time- where we shall enjoy eternally, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him”.