The LATimes on Jim Holman, the most interesting publisher, not just of San Diego’s alternative paper for which Matthew Lickona writes, but of several conservative Catholic monthlies, including LA Catholic Mission and San Francisco Faith.

Really an interesting article. You should go read it. What people like the writers of the LATimes and, presumably, much of its readership can’t grasp is that radical commitment to the poor is consistent with radical commitment to the unborn. In fact, it makes less sense to claim to be one with the poor and support the killing of their children.

A father of seven, Holman has been described in some accounts as a recluse and ultraconservative ideologue. Friends say that portrait is off the mark.

Rather, they say, the lean, graying-at-the-temples publisher is a cerebral man who tilts libertarian but is defined mostly by his deep religious beliefs. He attends Mass daily and counts priests among his close friends. He once took an extended leave from his newspaper to work with a missionary group on Los Angeles’ skid row.

Despite his substantial wealth, Holman takes the bus to work, eats sack lunches and lives modestly — an anti-consumerist lifestyle his friends attribute to his faith. In addition to the Reader, he publishes four lay Catholic papers — in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tijuana — that routinely skewer bishops and others who stray from the official teachings of the church in Rome. The papers also reflect the Catholic doctrine that homosexual acts are sinful.

"Jim is devoutly Catholic, and everything he does is informed by his faith," said Bob McPhail, editor of La Cruz de California, Holman’s Tijuana-based paper. McPhail said Holman is legendary among nuns and priests in Tijuana — where he once lived in a spartan apartment in the city’s red-light district — for his financial support of church schools, homes for unwed mothers and programs for the poor.

Abortion has long been one of the publisher’s overriding concerns, stemming, friends say, from his belief in the sanctity of life. Holman has been to jail for protesting outside abortion clinics, and has given money to politicians who share his views.