Archive and History of the St. Paul Printer

A Brief History of St' Paul's Printer

St. Paul’s Printer began in September of 1958. We called it the Michalmas issue because it came out about the time of the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. We called our publication “The Anglican Paulist”. It was a Time magazine size professional glossy. Our founder, Canon Rene Bozarth, a journalist and one time program director of the Mutual Network flagship station in Los Angeles knew we had to get the story of our life and ministry to as many people in the Episcopal Church as we could. By the third issue the Roman Catholic Paulist Fathers of Boston sent us a polite letter saying we could not use the word “Paulist” in our mast head because they had it copyrighted. So we changed the title to “St. Paul’s Printer.”

Because we could no longer pay for professional printing, we reduced the size to its present digest form and the Brothers printed it in our own print shop in the basement of our Gresham, Oregon nursing home. To speed things along, Fr. Bozarth would type articles on a Linotype machine. The monks would print, fold, collate, staple, trim and address the magazines, finally bagging them for delivery to the Post Office.

Primarily the quarterly was about the life and work of the Society of St. Paul. However, there were always other topics from theology, liturgy and church history to social justice issues in the world. Because of our concerns about Apartheid in Southwest Africa in the 60s we were persona non grata in South Africa. Barnabas and Rene got one of the last interviews of the British Governor General in Rhodesia when Ian Smith led that country out of the Common Wealth.

We’ve had many guest writers from Helen Hayes to our own Dean Richardson. In recent years we’ve leaned more toward information about the spiritual life, programs of St. Paul’s Cathedral, meditations, and a little humor now and then.

Archived Issues of the Printer