The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, the scrappy former president of the University of Notre Dame who stood up to both the White House and the Vatican as he transformed Catholic higher education in America and raised a powerful moral voice in national affairs, died late Thursday. He was 97.
The university confirmed his death in a statement on its website, saying that he had died just before midnight at Holy Cross House adjacent to the university, in South Bend, Ind. It did not give a cause of death.
As an adviser to presidents, special envoy to popes, theologian, author, educator and activist, Father Hesburgh was considered the most influential priest in America for decades. In 1986, the year he retired after a record 35 years as president of Notre Dame, a survey of 485 university presidents named him the most effective college president in the country.
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Father Hesburgh initially resisted going into administration at Notre Dame, preferring to stay in the classroom. But he was made vice president and assistant to the Notre Dame president, the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh. In 1952, at age 35, he took over as president.
At the time, Notre Dame was a small university regarded as strong in football and weak in just about everything else but theology. Father Hesburgh set out to build up the faculty, upgrade the academic standards and increase the size of the school, which admitted women for the first time in 1972. He became an effective fund-raiser, inheriting a $9 million endowment and increasing it to $350 million. Today, Notre Dame has one of the largest endowments in the nation, exceeding $9 billion.
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