MANY YEARS AGO, during the summer before my last school year as a seminarian, I took a six-week course at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C., on the social teaching of the Church. The course was organized by Msgr. George Higgins, who was perhaps the most informed priest in the country. Msgr. Higgins, who became […]
RECENTLY, HOLY CROSS Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, passed away at the age of 97. During my years at Notre Dame, Father Ted, as some of us called him, became a mentor and a friend whose guidance has been imprinted on every decision I made since our first meeting in 1997.
I’VE BEEN THINKING a lot these days about the geometry of leadership. Those thoughts are prompted by invitations I have had to speak to college students about leadership and also by the recent death of a great educational leader, Holy Cross Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, and by the emergence in Iowa and New Hampshire of presidential hopefuls as the primary season begins to heat up.
Dear Editor: I am sure that the recent passing of the longest-serving president of the University of Notre Dame, Father Theodore B. Hesburgh, touched many in the Catholic collegiate world. Although I am a graduate (1951) of St. Francis College, Brooklyn, I was deeply impressed by one of his comments that I quoted periodically in my high school teaching career, as well as my catechetical stint at St. Pius X, Rosedale.
Father Hesburgh led the university through a period of dramatic growth during 35 years as president and held sway with political and civil rights leaders.
