Notre Dame president, human rights herald, dies at 97

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh transformed the University of Notre Dame into a school known almost as much for academics as for football, even if it meant challenging popes, presidents or legendary football coaches.

And he did it while championing human rights around the globe, from civil rights close to home – he joined hands with Martin Luther King Jr. at a 1964 rally and opened campus doors to women – to supporting Third World development. The work often took him far from campus, where the joke became that while God was everywhere, Hesburgh was everywhere but Notre Dame.

But Hesburgh, who died late Thursday at age 97, spent enough time on campus while at the helm from 1952-87 to build Notre Dame into an academic power.

He was featured on the cover of Time magazine a decade into his tenure for an article describing him as the most influential figure in the reshaping of Catholic education, and he was awarded 150 honorary degrees. During his tenure, student enrollment spiked and the school’s endowment grew from $9 million to $350 million.

The charming and personable priest found as much ease meeting with heads of state as he did with students. His aim was constant: Better people’s lives.

“I go back to an old Latin motto, opus justitiae pax: Peace is the work of justice,” Hesburgh said in a 2001 interview. “We’ve known 20 percent of the people in the world have 80 percent of the goodies, which means the other 80 percent have to scrape by on 20 percent.”

Hesburgh died late Thursday night on the school’s campus in South Bend. Hesburgh had lost his sight and had been slowing down, yet he still celebrated Mass daily and showed up at his campus office every day until last week, said the Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s current president.

“We knew when he wasn’t going to the office, that was a sign,” Jenkins said.

Hesburgh’s goal coming out of the seminary was to be a Navy chaplain during World War II, but he was sent to Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to pursue a doctorate. He then returned to Notre Dame, where he became head of the theology department, then executive vice president. He was named president at age 35 in 1952.

His passion for civil rights earned him a spot as a founding member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1957.

President Richard Nixon fired him from the commission in 1972, after Hesburgh famously challenged Nixon’s record.

“I said, ‘I ended this job the way that I began 15 years ago – fired with enthusiasm,’ ” Hesburgh recalled in 2007.