Francis J. Finn

Father Francis J. Finn, (October 4, 1859 – November 2, 1928) was an American Jesuit priest who has been called the "Catholic Horatio Alger". He wrote a series of 27 popular novels for young people, which contain likeable characters and adventure, and emphasize the important of prayer and keeping true to your faith values.

Early life
Francis J. Finn was born on October 4, 1859, in St. Louis, Missouri. His parents, John Finn and Mary Whyte Finn, were both Irish immigrants. He attended parochial schools. As a boy, Francis was deeply impressed with Cardinal Wiseman's famous novel of the early Christian martyrs, Fabiola. Eleven-year-old Francis was a voracious reader; he read the works of Charles Dickens, devouring Nicholas Nickleby and The Pickwick Papers. From his First Communion at age 12, Francis began to desire to become a Jesuit priest. Fr. Charles Coppens urged Francis to apply himself to his Latin, to improve it by using an all-Latin prayerbook, and to read good Catholic books. Fr. Finn credited his vocation to this advice and to his membership in the Sodality of Our Lady.

Priesthood
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1879 after graduating from St. Louis University. Francis began his Jesuit novitiate and seminary studies on March 24. As a young Jesuit scholastic, he suffered from repeated bouts of sickness. He would be sent home to recover, would return in robust health, then would come down with another ailment. Normally this would have been seen as a sign that he did not have a vocation, yet his superiors kept him on. Fr. Finn commented, “God often uses instruments most unfit to do His work.”

In 1881 Finn was assigned as a prefect of St. Mary's boarding school or "college" in St. Mary's College, Kansas (which became the fictional “St. Maure's”). Francis was ordained to the priesthood in 1891, and after some time at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he came to St. Xavier College (now Xavier University) in Cincinnati. Fr. Finn spent many years of his priestly life at St. Xavier's. There he was well loved, and it is said that wherever he went—if he took a taxi, ate at a restaurant, attended a baseball game—people would not take his money for their services, but instead would press money into his hand for his many charities. During the 1920s Fr. Finn served as a trustee of Xavier University.

In 1904 he served as the first director of the St. Xavier Commercial School for girls, which offered a two-year course of study including stenography, book-keeping, and typesetting.

Father Francis J. Finn died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 2, 1928.

Children's author
Before 1865, most American Catholic Literature was either translated from French, German, or Flemish books, or reprints from English and Irish works.

At St. Mary's College Finn learned how to teach and discipline boys. If they promised to behave, he promised to tell them a story. He began with Oliver Twist. One afternoon while supervising a class busy writing a composition, Mr. Finn thought of how they represented to him the typical American Catholic boy. With nothing else to do, he took up pencil and paper. “Why not write about such boys as are before me?” he asked himself. In no time at all he had dashed off the first chapter of Tom Playfair. He went on to write 26 more.

According to the American Catholic Who's Who, Fr. Finn is “universally acknowledged the foremost Catholic writer of fiction for young people.” His books were available in Braille, and were translated into French, German, Flemish, Italian, Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Spanish, Caledonian and Portuguese. It was Fr. Finn's lifelong conviction that "One of the greatest things in the world is to get the right book into the hands of the right boy or girl. No one can indulge in reading to any extent without being largely influenced for better or worse."

Legacy
It was Father Finn who in 1925 came up with the nickname for the Xavier University athletic teams, "The Musketeers". The University bestows the Father Francis J. Finn, S.J. Award on the member of the graduating class who best exemplifies qualities of Father Finn's fictional heroes: strong spiritual values, leadership and breadth of interest.

Finn's children's stories continue to be read, particularly in home school curriculums.