Background material including biographical sketches, obituaries, notebooks, and files dating from Scharper's years as a student, a Jesuit scholastic (1937-1948), and a college professor (1947-1955); subject files representing his service to the Bridgeport Diocese, the Christophers, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the John XXIII Institute, Maryknoll and Orbis Books, the Religious Education Association, Sacred Heart University, Sheed and Ward, the Second Vatican Council, and the Vatican Secretariate for Promoting Christian Unity, including material on capitalism, ecumenism, education, the Eucharist, family, Jewish-Christian relations, justice and peace, Latin America, liberation theology, morality, John Courtney Murray, S.J., nuclear energy, nuclear war, papal encyclicals, Pope John Paul II, race and civil rights, the Vietnam War, and world hunger; manuscripts of articles, columns, interviews, lectures, screen plays, and scripts for documentaries on religious and social issues; contracts and correspondence; printed material, photographs,

Also papers of his wife Sarah (Sally) J. Scharper (1920-1992), who collaborated with him on scripts, screen plays, and book projects, and was herself a Catholic journalist, editor, lecturer, actress, director, college teacher of speech and drama, and board member of the Christophers (1986-1992).