Our Lady's Man

When a lay university's president dies or resigns all the world knows that months of excursions and excitements, requests and refusals, acrimony and argument will probably elapse before a new president is chosen. Last month died Rev. Charles Leo O'Donnell, president of the University of Notre Dame since 1928. Last week in Notre Dame Rev. James Aloysius Burns, U. S. Provincial Superior of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, arose at evening prayer to announce that he and four colleagues had that day chosen Rev. John Francis O'Hara, 46, to be Notre Dame's president.

Father O'Hara did not want the job. Titular vice president and acting president of Notre Dame during President O'Donnell's year of illness, he had already announced that he would rather keep on being the university's prefect of religion. But the Roman Catholic authority which made the choice of a new president so smooth and peaceful rests on unhesitating obedience. Father O'Hara accepted his orders without protest.

It was an unlikely climax to a career which began in Montevideo, Uruguay. 29 years ago. Son of the U. S. Legation secretary, John O'Hara became private secretary to the U. S. Minister at 17. In 1906 he was making market surveys for the U. S. Bureau of Foreign & Domestic Commerce, in 1907 following his father to Santos, Brazil as consular clerk. Then he went back to the U. S. and entered Notre Dame.

Except for a year studying Latin-American history at Washington's Catholic University, he has been at Notre Dame ever since. He has kept up his interest in Latin America--editing a news service, writing magazine articles, advising the National Foreign Trade Council, traveling to promote university exchanges. For seven years he was dean of Notre Dame's College of Commerce. But his real job since 1917 has been to be in a community of priests and confessors, the prime guide, philosopher and friend of all Notre Dame students--their prefect of religion. His students think he knows everything and their elders, marveling at his encyclopedic mind, are inclined to agree. Every evening he has spent long hours giving advice on religion, money, careers and love to all young comers. Every morning from 6 to 12 he has heard confessions, given communion. He is tall, grey-fringed, smiling, athletic. His day begins at 4:30 a. m. with a cold shower, includes, summer & winter, an afternoon swim in the campus lake, an evening stroll.

Father O'Hara has never cared much about watching his university's famed football team in action. But before every game, each of which is dedicated to a saint, Notre Dame footballers go to him at the Shrine of St. Olaf for prayer and blessing. When President Emeritus Henry Smith Pritchett of Carnegie Foundation pointed an accusing finger at what he called Notre Dame commercialism last year, Father O'Hara snapped back: "He starts with the false assumption that highly publicized football is inimical to scholastic attainment." Then he went on to point out how football profits have nourished Notre Dame's plant and scholarly equipment, how Notre Dame footballers have consistently topped the general student scholastic average.

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