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Volume 48, Issue 99 | MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015 | ndsmcobserver.com
“I
woul d h o pe
t he y remember me a s a priest.”
1917–2 015
U
niversity President Emeritus Fr. Theodore Hesburgh’s last day was characterized by the act that was most central to him throughout his life — saying Mass. Although he wasn’t able to preside, Fr. Hesburgh was able to say Mass with his brothers at Holy Cross House on the day of his death. Doyle said other men present commented on how “happy and peaceful he looked” throughout the service. It had been a prayer Hesburgh prayed for decades, to say Mass on the day he died. This desire wasn’t a surprise to those who knew him, Dillon Hall rector Fr. Paul Doyle said. Hesburgh was a man who thought of himself as a priest before anything else, who spent his life in prayer, Doyle said. “[Hesburgh] was a prayerful guy, and he prayed from the gut,” Doyle said. “The prayers were very much between him and the Lord. He would talk to Mary, and the rest who heard him would feel like bystanders — like this is an intimate relationship
and exchange here. He would do that at Mass, after Communion for example. He would just pray out loud to the Lord.” Hesburgh prided himself in saying Mass every day — only missing one or two days in almost 72 years as a priest, Doyle said. “[Hesburgh] said Mass in the Kremlin; he said Mass in Buckingham Palace; he said Mass in the South Pole, in the military installation down there,” he said. “He said Mass in submarines and everywhere else.” Fr. Ernie Bartell, professor emeritus of economics, was present at Hesburgh’s last Mass. He said he remembers saying Mass with Hesburgh even in the forests of rural Mexico, the site of a Notre Dame service project for students during the beginning of Hesburgh’s stint as University president. “He was a great adventurer ... but wherever he was, he said Mass. When he came to Mexico,
see MASS PAGE 3