Raymond DeJaegher,

A Catholic Missionary In China and Vietnam'

The New York Times, Friday, February 8, 1980

The Rev. Raymond J. DeJaegher, a Belgian-born Roman Catholic missionary and educator in China and Vietnam for many years and more recently a director of the Asian Speakers Bureau in New York City, died of cancer Wednesday at Saint Rose's Home in Manhattan. He was 74 years old and lived at 86 Riverside Drive in Manhattan.

Father DeJaegher was a teacher and missionary in China from his ordination at Anguo Seminary there in 1931 to the onset of World War II. He was imprisoned by the Japanese early in the war and later was a captive of the Chinese Communists from 1943 to 1945.

After the war, Father DeJaegher was active in relief work in Peking. He then came to the United States, where he served as regent of Seton Hall University's Far Eastern Studies institute from 1950 to 1953.

From 1954 to 1964, Father DeJaegher ,was in Vietnam, where he served as a special adviser to the late President Ngo Dinh Diem, was director of the Free Pacific News Agency and founded the Chinese-language Free Pacific Magazine and The New Vietnam, a daily newspaper. He also edited the French-language magazine Front de la Liberté and the English-language Free Front.

He wrote more than 100 magazine articles and several books. His most recent book was "Peking's Red Guard."

Father DeJaegher was born in Courtrai, Belgium, studied in England and then returned to his homeland to acquire degrees in philosophy and theology at the University of Louvain.

He is survived by a brother. Francis, and a sister, Helen, both of whom live in Belgium.

A funeral mass will be celebrated at noon on Monday at the Transfiguration Church on Mott Street in Chinatown.

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