80 Years a Jesuit in 2025
Father James Carter, SJ, president emeritus of Loyola University New Orleans and the school’s longest-tenured president, spent almost five decades of his Jesuit ministry at the school. This year he celebrates 80 years as a Jesuit.
Born in New York City in 1927, Fr. Carter was raised in Louisiana and entered the novitiate of the former New Orleans Province at Grand Coteau, Louisiana, in 1945. After he was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1958, he returned to teach physics at Loyola in 1960. In 1970, he was named provost and academic vice president, and in 1974 he began a 21-year tenure as the school’s president.
During his years of ministry in New Orleans, Fr. Carter led by example in the service of faith and promotion of justice. He served as a division director of the United Way, a director at New Orleans Public Service, Inc., and as president of the Metropolitan Area Committee. Father Carter served as interim executive director of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in 1996 and as co-chair of the New Orleans region of the board of the National Conference for Community and Justice. Among other honors, Loyola presented Fr. Carter with an honorary doctorate in 1995.
From 2001 to 2004, Fr. Carter served as pastor and superior of the Jesuit community at Immaculate Conception Parish in New Orleans, before returning to Loyola in 2004 to serve as a pastoral minister and part-time science, religion and physics teacher.
Father Carter’s academic career was wide-ranging, and he wrote broadly on nuclear physics, evolution and religion. His course on science and religion was one of the most popular at Loyola during his later years there. In 2017, he shared “Five Lessons from a Lifetime at Loyola” in an oral history video produced by a student at the university.
He remained at Loyola University until mid-2020, when he was assigned to a ministry of prayer, first at the St. Alphonsus Rodriguez Pavilion in Grand Coteau and later at St. Ignatius Hall in Florissant, Missouri, where he serves today.
