Jesuit editor who resigned to spend a year at SCU (Father Reese)

[Coastie for Truth]

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, the editor who resigned under Vatican pressure from the influential Jesuit opinion magazine, America, has accepted an invitation to spend a year on sabbatical at Santa Clara University.

In an e-mail Wednesday, Reese said he would spend June in California vacationing on the beach before joining Santa Clara's Jesuit community in July. May 31 will be his last day at the magazine, which is owned by the Jesuit order and based in New York.

Reese's resignation earlier this month made headlines around the world. Many news organizations reported that he was forced out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly headed by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. A respected thinker and expert on church politics, Reese was a popular American media commentator during the recent papal election in Rome.

Reese edited America for seven years. He is credited with increasing the magazine's circulation by exploring all sides of controversial theological issues, from using condoms to prevent AIDS to denying Holy Communion to politicians who support abortion. His departure has been mourned by some as a sign of a clampdown on Catholic intellectuals seen as not orthodox enough.

Settling in at Santa Clara will be a homecoming for Reese, a longtime friend of the Rev. Paul Locatelli, the university's president. They have known each other since entering the Society of Jesus together in 1962 at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos. As a young priest in the early 1970s, Reese served for a year as assistant to former Santa Clara University president Thomas D. Terry.

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