Remembering Father O’Hare: How a visionary jesuit changed New York City forever
The Rev. Joseph O’Hare (right) in the company of (from right to left) Cardinal Avery Dulles and New York Mayors Mike Bloomberg and Ed Koch. Photo courtesy of Fordham University.
(OPINION) Death is a subject on the mind of many these days. How can it not since so many people are getting sick around the world because of the coronavirus pandemic.
American Catholicism lost one of its giants following the death of 89-year-old Joseph O’Hare, a Jesuit priest who served as president of Fordham University for nearly two decades as well as the editor of America magazine. The Jesuit-run opinion journal made the announcement on Monday, although they did not give a cause of death. The university, in an email to alums, said he’d been in “declining health.”
O’Hare was never a cardinal or bishop, but in many ways he wielded far more power and influence. A prominent figure across New York’s religious, academic and civic life for four decades, I crossed paths with O’Hare on numerous occasions. He served as president of Fordham University when I was a student there in the early 1990s. His 19-year tenure as president of the school remains a record. As a reporter and later editor at the student-run newspaper The Observer, which served the Lincoln Center campus, O’Hare was often the target of criticism and outrage.
Nonetheless, O’Hare did a lot of great things for Fordham. During his two decades at the helm of the university, the Bronx-born O’Hare raised Fordham’s profile and turned it into one of the city’s best Catholic schools in the country.
In 1984, after becoming the school’s 31st president, Father O’Hare — as he was known to everyone — urged both the faculty and students to be “both the critical conscience and creative consciousness of the city.”
O’Hare didn’t just push others to do that — he lived it himself. Then-New York Mayor Ed Koch appointed O’Hare in 1988 to serve as the chairman of the city’s Campaign Finance Board, a position he held for 15 years. The independent board allows more citizens to run for office by granting public matching funds to candidates.
Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg rightly credited O’Hare for starting a “renaissance” at Fordham, but also with helping root out political corruption in New York.
“He was scrupulously honest, fiercely independent and never afraid to speak his mind, even when it rubbed elected officials the wrong way,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “In a city of legendary Irish pols, one of the very best never ran for office — but he left a mark on politics like no other.”
Indeed, O’Hare reshaped both the city and Fordham during his lifetime, a legacy that lives on in many project the school embarked on during his tenure. The construction of four residence halls at the school’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, one of which was renamed O’Hare Hall in his honor, remain a prime example.
I would see O’Hare around campus all the time. He filled a room with his presence. A tall and distinguished man, I always saw O’Hare dressed as a priest — never in street clothes. He took his role as a priest, scholar and university president seriously. Nonetheless, he was friendly to students and always had time to chat with them. He was a great storyteller and wonderful public speaker. He’d speak lovingly about his father, an NYPD officer, and mother, a schoolteacher. He may have worn a white collar, but he was blue collar all the way — despite his education and degrees.
I would often see O’Hare at school sporting events at Rose Hill. I covered sports for The Observer and regularly made the trek to the Bronx to cover basketball and soccer games. O’Hare was often there, dressed in black shirt and pants and a matching black blazer. His white clerical collar standing out most — a dress code he would only alter, it seemed, with green for St. Patrick’s Day each March. O’Hare was always available to give a quote — catnip for reporters — and was always proud of his students. That legacy lives on through the O’Hare Fellows program, where students get the chance to embark on writing careers at America.
O’Hare was great with words. Following the 9/11 terror attacks, O’Hare called on the school and its students to return to “a state of normalcy.”
“Our immediate response as an academic institution must be to return, as best we can, as quickly as we can, to a state of normalcy in response to the calls of our civic leaders,” he said at the time. “As we move forward as a university community, we also need to seek a better understanding of the political and cultural roots of this monstrous evil and commit ourselves to work with others to build a world of peace and justice founded on a respect for the human dignity of all peoples. As a nation and as individuals, we must resist those instincts that might prompt us to strike out against the innocent. The contempt for human life demonstrated in these wholesale attacks on the innocent is a fundamental violation of all religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If we are blinded by a desire for revenge and yield to racial and national stereotypes we become mirror images of our adversaries. Only by keeping faith in God and with one another will we prevail.”
“State of normalcy” and “keeping faith in God and with one another” resonate today as doctors and nurses in New York and across the nation battle the coronavirus and our changed world. O’Hare isn’t here anymore to reassure New Yorkers. Both the city and Fordham will miss him greatly.
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor and regular contributor to Religion Unplugged. He is the former deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.