A Prince of Priests, Without a Nickel

In 1952 Father Theodore Hesburgh, then only 35, was appointed president of the University of Notre Dame. Over the following quarter-century--a longer term than that of any other major university president--he has changed the school profoundly and become one of the most influential figures in the country. As Notre Dame prepared for its 25th graduation of the Hesburgh era, TIME Correspondent Robert Ajemian talked with the priest and wrote this report:

The familiar Roman collar had been pulled off and hung up with the black jacket. It was well past midnight and Father Hesburgh was still working through the piles of mail in his old, highceilinged office. He routinely stays up until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning.

Traces of his fame are all around him. On the walls and tables of the big room are autographed photos of a younger Ted Hesburgh standing comfortably beside Popes and Presidents. His hair is less black now and his heavy jaw fuller, but he still has the handsome black-Irish looks of his mother. There is an inscribed silver plate from Jackie Kennedy and an emerald-studded ring from Pope Paul. He has become a virtual prince among priests. The sound of a Beethoven recording, a gift from the president of RCA, plays softly in the background.

Monastic Life. On the other hand, Hesburgh for all his years at Notre Dame has continued to sleep on the same iron cot in his tiny room at nearby Corby Hall. The shelves of his outer office are stacked with cans of orange juice and Campbell soup, a sharp reminder of his monastic life. His rickety hot plate sits on the counter. It is the mark of an asceticism that Ted Hesburgh seems to impose on himself--almost as though he felt a need to reassure himself that he still is a priest. "After all these years, 1 haven't got a nickel in the world," he says, "and I like that."

Hesburgh's batch of mail touched on the widely contrasting aspects of his life --appealing to the simple pastor as well as to the clerical entrepreneur. There was a letter from Cardinal Franz Koenig of Vienna congratulating Hesburgh on his recent elevation to the chairmanship of the Rockefeller Foundation. A woman friend in terrible emotional trouble begged for help. Teddy Kollek, the mayor of Jerusalem, wanted Hesburgh to fly over and help stop the rapid development of high-rise buildings. There was a hopeful note from the freshman class asking if Hesburgh would attend their formal dance. Another letter told him that the Chinese Communists, who generally view priests as only slightly more admirable than locusts, were interested in inviting him to China.

Hesburgh searched for one letter in particular, a reply from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had been offered a Notre Dame degree this year. He finally found it: a polite no. Hesburgh was disappointed--but he had already landed his friend Jimmy Carter as the commencement speaker. The graduation ceremony will be a deliberate show of support for Carter on human rights, one of Hesburgh's passions. Hesburgh will award degrees to Bishop Donal Lament, who was ousted from Rhodesia; Stephen Cardinal Kim, who has fought against government repression in South Korea; and Paul Cardinal Arnes, who has spoken out against human rights violations in Brazil.

When Hesburgh took over the university in 1952, Notre Dame was best known for football and dedicated to the production of believing Catholics. In those days students had to attend Mass three times a week or face disciplinary reprisals. Notre Dame boys were even advised to pray before dates with girls at nearby St. Mary's. Outside lecturers were picked for orthodoxy more than for probing intellect.

Hesburgh, who had been a prison priest as well as a chaplain for the armed forces--and was no great lover of football--soon began changing all that. He steered Notre Dame away from the control of the church and into the hands of a lay board of trustees. It was a painful and uncommon achievement, which freed the school from a burdensome authority and historically redefined Catholic higher education in the U.S. At the same time, Hesburgh struggled to retain the moral quality of his school. "We stress values here," he says. "American universities have become obsessed with objectivity. They turn out highly competent but morally neutral people." Hesburgh upgraded the quality of faculty and curriculum, and in 1972 instituted his second dramatic reform: Notre Dame became coed.

Almost from the beginning, the priest made a remarkable impression on the Establishment. He began getting invitations to join more and more of America's powerful private foundations and Government commissions. At times he was considered simply "the necessary Catholic," but Hesburgh eagerly accepted the chance to make himself heard. Eisenhower named him to the Civil Rights Commission in 1957. He became a member of the Carnegie Commission on higher education, later accepted a place on the board of David Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. The Vatican appointed him representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He did not always accept. When Lyndon Johnson asked him to take over the space program in 1964, Hesburgh declined. "I couldn't see a Catholic priest handing out $6 billion in contracts." He similarly turned down Richard Nixon's offer in 1969 to head the poverty program. His priesthood always had to be reckoned with. Says he: "I didn't want to become some sort of Cardinal Richelieu."

Over the Andes. Nonetheless, the clergyman became irresistibly more and more involved in power and politics. He was soon crisscrossing the globe, logging as many as 150,000 miles a year. His messages often included lines like "I am writing this from over the Andes." Back home, his spectacular travels were at first greeted with pride and then, as the years passed, a certain amount of sniping. A campus statue of Moses, with hand pointed skyward, inspired the gag: "There goes Hesburgh."

No matter that he was a place dropper, Hesburgh had the ear of the elite. He remembers waiting for Lyndon Johnson outside the Oval Office late one evening with his civil rights team until Johnson, looking limp, ushered them in. Johnson was so exhausted he lay down on a couch, gathered the group around him like visitors to a sickbed and kept his eyes fastened on the ceiling as Hesburgh outlined the difficult goals. Johnson accepted all of them.

Hesburgh's advice was often blunt. He once told Richard Nixon, with whom he developed a special closeness, that young people were scornful of the President. He urged Nixon to end the draft and allow 18-year-olds to vote. When Hesburgh's civil rights commission sharply criticized Nixon, the President's patience ran out. A White House secretary soon called Hesburgh and demanded that he resign by 6 o'clock the same day.

Carter offered Hesburgh a job working in the State Department for Cyrus Vance, but Hesburgh again held back. Of all the political leaders he has encountered, Hesburgh says that he finds Carter by far the most forthright. When Carter told him during the election that he was worried about Catholic support, Hesburgh reassured him. Then he offered a typically direct piece of advice: "I don't think people like to hear a man yakking about religion all the time."

Hesburgh is a fascinating, if exhausting, conversationalist, with strong opinions and an enormous range of subjects. Racism is the world's biggest problem, in Hesburgh's mind, although he is hopeful because he finds young peopie round the world much less prejudiced than their parents. It shows up, he says, in their confessions. "They feel worse about their sins of omission than they used to." Today's theologians, on the other hand, bother Hesburgh. "They have no faith," he says. "They teach theology like a science. They're not believers themselves. At least the scientists do believe in a chemistry table or the speed of light." Hesburgh worries about educators too. "We've got a bunch of faint fellows who don't want to make educational waves. The '60s took a terrific toll. We lost a whole generation of university presidents. Only King Brewster [of Yale] and I survived."

Big Mistake. On some of the moral issues that confront his students, Hesburgh is fairly traditional. He is opposed to young people living together before they marry. "I think the girls get shortchanged," he says. "Some of these young people get so jaded they can't ever settle down with anybody." He is proud of some statistics indicating that 93% of the marriages of Notre Dame alumni hold together. Although he is against abortion, he believes that the Vatican encyclical forbidding artificial contraceptives was a big mistake. He supports more work on a reliable method of determining the ovulation cycle. He ends up sounding ambivalent on celibacy. "I don't recommend it for everybody," he says with a shrug. "It's not easy, but it's right for me. For some priest on the Amazon, it might not be. After all, priests in the Middle Ages lived with women, and all the Apostles were married."

Hesburgh sounds more confident on the subject of happiness. "It can only come," he says, "from giving at least a corner of yourself to others. People today are so egocentric. God help the person who goes through life doing nothing for someone else. He's doomed." He finds that young people today are less ambitious than a generation ago, duller than in the '60s but more eager to find some meaning in their lives. Hesburgh keeps a close rein on his own ambitions, even as he enjoys the trappings of success, smoking a Cuban cigar and sipping a Grand Marnier. Ambition among churchmen, says Hesburgh, is corrosive: "I've seen it ruin so many."

Hesburgh the outer man seems unfailingly optimistic. Close friends say they never find him in a bad mood. But his is a calling where true feelings are often submerged. For all his heartiness, the inner Hesburgh seldom surfaces. "I think he's probably a lonely man who makes up for it by work and talk," says a colleague. Hesburgh laughs at this. He says his religion protects him from loneliness. While he says Mass every day. whether in a Moscow hotel room or at the South Pole, he seldom quotes the Bible in conversation. He is not a scholar or even especially profound. "Ted is a doer," says one close friend, "not a tormented intellectual seeking some kind of truth."

Though he is popularly viewed as a kind of Catholic Mr. Chips, Hesburgh is now held in such awe by Notre Dame students that they seldom deal personally with him. Student Body President Mike Gassman says he would not dare interrupt the president with ordinary school problems because "he's too important now." Another student says, "Father Ted is usually too busy playing world savior." Both of them are swift to add, however, they think Hesburgh is the main force behind Notre Dame's stress on values.

Even as Hesburgh buries himself in his work, no one really understands what drives him. Is it his need for prestige or power, or is it his need to keep building for the greater glory of his God? His answer is just to keep working. He turns 60 this month and has no plans to retire. Instead, he announced a week ago that Notre Dame is undertaking the largest fund-raising drive in its history. $130 million. "Show me the top ten endowments," says Hesburgh, "and I'll show you the top ten schools in the country." Notre Dame's campaign will lift it close to the top ten, but everybody knows in the long run that will not be good enough for Ted Hesburgh.

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