Father William Barnaby Faherty, the well-known Jesuit historian and author, died Aug. 22 at St. Louis University Hospital. He was 96 and had been a Jesuit for nearly 80 years.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 24, at St. Francis Xavier "College" Church, Lindell and Grand boulevards in Midtown St. Louis. Visitation will precede the Mass from 4 to 7 p.m. at the College Church.

Despite declining health, Father Faherty, the prolific author of more than 40 books in several genres, was working on a book about early St. Louis Archbishop Peter Kenrick at the time of his death.

A St. Louis native, he was the son of an Irish Catholic father and a Protestant mother. He attended St. Louis University High School. In a newspaper article in the early 1980s, Father Faherty said he gave much thought to becoming a priest during his high school years and cited the influence of an instructor who was a Jesuit priest....

From 1963-84, Father Faherty was professor of history at St. Louis University and was professor emeritus at SLU until his death. From 1980 to 2002 he was curator of St. Stanislaus Museum on the site of the original Jesuit novitiate in Florissant, and from 1984 to 2000 he was the archivist for the Missouri Province Archives and later the Midwest Jesuit Archives in St. Louis. He served as archivist emeritus for the Jesuits' Missouri Province until his death....