Polar Priest

Journeying northward last week was Father Thomas Griffin of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. His destination was the northernmost parish of the North Pole diocese, situated in Canada's vast north-west territory. In that diocese are at least half of the 14,000 Eskimos on the North American continent, care of whom the Catholic Church delegated to the Oblates in 1864. However not until 1911 did they commence their active missionary work. It took them six years to convert a single Eskimo. Then they got four families.

A strenuous athlete, hunter and fisherman is Father Griffin, first U. S. volunteer to this diocese. He received an elementary education in the Parochial schools of Manhattan, then went to St. Anthony's Apostolic School, San Antonio, Tex., conducted by the Oblates. There he played baseball and basketball, led a football combination famed in the Southwest as "The Four Magicians." Summers he spent with the Oblate students and Priests at Fort Lavaca Tex.

Vigorous Bishop Breynat oversees the North Pole diocese. He inspects his charge by airplane. Father Griffin plans to shorten the devious route from Texas to his parish by flying over as much of the northern territory as possible. When he arrives he will be confronted by difficult tasks. Hostile native sorcerers are slippery hummocks of the spirit. To surmount them his cross must be his alpenstock.