By Tracey Primrose
Fr. Cornelius M. Buckley, SJ, who lives at Sacred Heart Jesuit Center, the Jesuits West Province’s retirement community in Los Gatos, California, recently published a book. At 99, he is only three years short of tying the Guinness World Record for oldest published male author. Fr. Buckley will likely be nonplussed by the news that he was beat by a 102-year-old. Since Jesuits never retire, he still has a shot.
Fr. Buckley’s latest book, California Blackrobe, is a biography of a fellow Jesuit, Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, the founder of Ignatius Press. The term “Blackrobe” was coined to describe Jesuit missionaries, who, dressed in distinctive black cassocks, evangelized various tribes of Native people in North America during the 16th and 19th centuries. Fr. Fessio started the San Francisco-based Ignatius Press in 1978 to bring English translations of Catholic theologians to market. One of its first authors was Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, who had served as Fr. Fessio’s professor and doctoral thesis director at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Fr. Ratzinger later became Pope Benedict XVI.
Today, Ignatius Press is one of the largest U.S. publishers of Catholic books, magazines, videos and music. Fr. Fessio is also the founder of the St. Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco, a living-learning community that focuses on the Jesuit Catholic tradition.
When Ignatius Press wanted to commemorate the life of its 84-year-old founder, they did not have to look far. Fr. Buckley had written several well-respected biographies of 19th-century Jesuit missionaries. This time, though, he would try his hand at something new—writing a book about a living subject who is also a friend.
Frs. Buckley and Fessio met in the late 1960s when the younger Jesuit (Fr. Fessio is now 84) was serving as a lecturer at Santa Clara University, and Fr. Buckley, recently returned to the Bay Area after earning his doctorate in history from the Sorbonne in Paris, joined the Santa Clara faculty.
When the project was first proposed, Fr. Fessio was reluctant to be the subject of a biography, but Fr. Buckley believes his old friend is “amazing in many respects” and deserves to have his life story commemorated. In December, the two concelebrated Mass at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, which was followed by a book signing and reception for 150 guests.
Fr. Buckley spent most of his years in ministry as a college professor, including decades at the University of San Francisco. In 2004, when he was 79, he took on a new job, serving as a chaplain at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California, for 17 years before moving to Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in 2021.
He is not active on social media, but one of his many admirers established a Facebook page, Fr. Cornelius M. Buckley, S.J. Fan Club, where nearly 700 members share updates and photos of their favorite Jesuit. When asked recently for the secret of his longevity, Fr. Buckley wryly said, “It’s not my fault.” He added, “It is a wonderful gift, and I thank God for it. I was just put in the right situation, at the right time. I’ve been very fortunate, blessed, you could call it one way, lucky you can call it another way, and you just take advantage of it. I’m not going to take it easy. I’m going to do what I can do.”
