Catholic World News News Feature

Jesuit Order Disciplines Father Fessio March 12, 2002

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 12, 02 (CWNews.com) -- Father Joseph Fessio, the Jesuit priest who founded Ignatius Press, has been reassigned to serve as a chaplain in a hospital in Los Angeles.

Although Father Fessio will be allowed to continue his work as a director of Ignatius Press-- which is based in San Francisco-- he has been ordered under obedience not to play a role in Campion College, the new Catholic liberal-arts institution being founded by Ignatius Press.

Father Fessio received his new assignment from the California Jesuit province after a dispute with the administration of the University of San Francisco (USF), a Jesuit institution, over the founding of Campion College.

Last year the USF president, Father Stephen Privett, dismissed the director of the Ignatius Institute, a university program dedicated to liberal-arts learning, using the "Great Books" approach. Critics of that move-- including Father Fessio, who had been a founder of the Ignatius Institute-- charged that USF was stifling an orthodox Catholic program.

Early in 2002, several scholars who had been involved in the Ignatius Institute came together to found a new institution, Campion College, which would be dedicated to the same principles that had originally driven the Ignatius Institute. The prospect of such a direct conflict was not attractive to the USF administration.