“These are enormously complicated institutions with so many different constituencies,” she said. “How do you navigate the latest controversy while still moving the university forward?”

“Bridging the gap between what they can afford to pay and the excellence they deserve is getting harder and harder,” Tetlow said. “It’s important to understand those goals are in tension with each other.”

“I am so eager to console the students who are in a great deal of pain,” she told the journalists. “I find myself in the embarrassing situation of revealing to them I have less power than they imagine that I do.”

“It’s so much easier to tear down an institution than to build one,” she said.

“What I’m proud of is helping Fordham double down on who we are — a Jesuit institution in New York, determined to find out how we can have an impact on a really broken world.”

“The advantage we have at this moment in a religious university is the ability to unabashedly talk about values and faith,” she added. “That’s harder at secular institutions, because they have to worry about offending people.”

“He was like another dad to me. He befriended, loved, kept up with, and supported me,” said Catherine McGovern, FCRH ’81, echoing the sentiments of alumni of many generations. 

Father Daly served as director of Campus Ministry at Fordham from 1980 to 1987. Later, he became assistant alumni chaplain, providing pastoral support to Fordham’s global community of more than 200,000 alumni from 2015 to 2019. This included attending alumni receptions and retreats, as well as writing seasonal prayers to alumni, often with a personal and poignant touch. He also served as chaplain to the women’s basketball team from 2017 to 2019, earning recognition from Fordham Athletics for his work. (Fun fact: His old Campus Ministry office served as the office of the fictional Father Damien Karras in the movie The Exorcist, said Beth Tarpey Evans, FCRH ’84, who once worked in Father Daly’s office. “He was so proud of that! He left that nameplate on the door,” Evans said.) 

A Second Father

What alumni remember most about Father Daly is the way he cared for them in the same spirit as a father, comforting them during difficult times and rejoicing with them during the most important moments of their lives, said those who knew him. He was a gregarious, fun, witty, and kind priest who took great pride in their accomplishments, said McGovern, who is part of a circle of women that fondly refer to themselves as “Leo’s Ladies.” 

He traveled across the country, marrying, baptizing, and blessing thousands of people—sometimes multiple generations in a single family, said his niece, Elizabeth Shortal Aptilon, FCLC ’85, GABELLI ’90. 

“You don’t meet that many people who are genuinely good people. There aren’t that many people that stay in touch with you for decades. But my uncle was someone who really maintained lifelong friends,” said Aptilon. 

An Advocate at Home and Abroad

Father Daly was born on July 29, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York, to Joseph Daly, a salesman, and Margaret McGowan Daly, a homemaker, both of whom had Irish heritage. He graduated from Brooklyn Preparatory High School, a Jesuit school in his home borough. He went on to earn a Master of Arts degree from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a degree in counseling psychology from Columbia University. 

Father Daly entered the Society of Jesus in 1948 and was ordained a priest at the Fordham University Church in 1961. He served his fellow New Yorkers in many roles, including assistant principal at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City; administrator at Loyola Seminary in Shrub Oak, New York; high school counselor at Regis High School and Xavier High School in Manhattan; community superior at Xavier High School; and assistant to the rector of the Jesuit community at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City. He conducted retreat work as a staff member and director at St. Ignatius Retreat House on Long Island before it closed in 2012. Father Daly also served communities abroad, as campus minister at the University of Guam and as a chaplain at a U.S. Army missile range in the Marshall Islands.  

Father Daly was a great storyteller who treasured time with family and friends, said his niece. In his spare time, he loved listening to jazz music and playing golf, she said. 

His friend and former colleague Daniel J. Gatti, S.J, who used to serve as Fordham’s alumni chaplain, recalled the time Father Daly nearly made a 165-yard hole in a single shot—and almost won a free car in the process. 

“Leo was about eight inches [away],” said Father Gatti, who had attended a Fordham Gridiron Golf Outing with Father Daly and two other Jesuits. “The whole day, no one won the car. … But Leo, I think, was the closest,” he said, chuckling.

‘He Served God’s People Well’ 

Four years ago, he was diagnosed with a parotid gland tumor, said McGovern, an OB-GYN whom Father Daly jokingly called his “personal obstetrician.” Despite dealing with serious illness during his final years—surgeries, radiation, immunotherapy, and partial loss of vision and hearing—Father Daly remained cheerful and involved with his Jesuit community and those he loved, said those who knew him. 

“Throughout his long life, he served God’s people well,” Father Gatti said.  

Father Daly is survived by his niece; grandnephew Brandon Craig Aptilon, GABELLI ’22; grandnephew Bradley Edward Aptilon; and nephew, James P. Shortal, his wife, Denise, and their daughter, Kristin. He is predeceased by his sister, Helen Shortal, née Daly, GSE ’49. His wake will be held at Murray-Weigel Hall on Jan. 19 from 3 to 8 p.m. The funeral Mass will be held the next day at the University Church at 11 a.m. and livestreamed on Campus Ministry’s website. Father Daly will be buried at the Jesuit Cemetery in Auriesville, New York. Gifts in his name may be made to the Leo Daly, S.J., Scholarship Fund. 

As always, football will be the centerpiece. Hot off a stellar 2022 season, the Rams have won three of their first four games and are ranked No. 15 in this week’s FCS Coaches Poll. They’ll take on the Lehigh Mountain Hawks. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m., but the festivities begin bright and early, with the 12th Annual 5K Ram Run at 9 a.m., campus tours, and much more.

Here are five things you won’t want to miss at Homecoming this year.

1. The New McShane Campus Center Arcade

The four-story McShane Campus Center opened in early 2022 and has been at the heart of an ongoing campaign to support students’ wellness and success. Last month, the University unveiled the latest addition—an airy, sun-filled arcade with a sparkling glass entrance that links the campus center to the Lombardi Center and the historic Rose Hill Gym.

See it on the 9:30 a.m. tour, led by a current Fordham student and starting in front of the McShane Center—or stroll through anytime throughout the day.

2. Coffee and Conversation with President Tetlow

At her recent State of the University address, President Tetlow talked about Fordham’s “three sources of power”—research, Jesuit teaching, and opportunity—and explained why the University isn’t chasing status and rankings. Hear more from her on all things Fordham at this event on the third floor of the McShane Center at 10:30 a.m. And grab a cup of joe to fuel up for the day!

3. Moglia Stadium

The University will officially name its football and soccer stadium in honor of Joe Moglia—a 1967 Fordham Prep and 1971 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate, award-winning football coach, and transformational business executive.

Planned renovations to the stadium include a state-of-the-art video board, seating and press box upgrades, new lighting, and more to enhance the game day experience. Moglia Stadium is part of the Jack Coffey Field complex that also includes Houlihan Park, the University’s baseball venue.

Check out the new signage for Moglia Stadium above the stands, and join us in honoring Joe Moglia at a special ceremony during the game.

4. Jesuit Gems, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’

Take a campus walking tour with Robert Reilly, FCRH ’72, LAW ’75, former assistant dean of Fordham Law School, as he brings Fordham’s Jesuit history and mission to life—and encourages even the most devoted alumni to see Rose Hill with new eyes.

The tour, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Discover the Jesuit Presence at Rose Hill,” kicks off outside the McShane Campus Center at 11:30 a.m. Reilly will highlight statues and lecture halls, stained-glass windows and architectural details—like those on the stunning wrought-iron doors of Dealy Hall. The 10 panels forming the sidelights of Dealy’s western entrance depict the arts and sciences—philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, rhetoric, and more—that the Jesuits included in their Ratio Studiorum (Latin for plan of studies), originally published in 1599.

“The curriculum that the Jesuits created has become the curriculum of all universities throughout the Earth,” Reilly says. “That is a great tribute to Jesuit education worldwide.”

5. Family Fun

Homecoming has something for everyone—including the kids! Check out the Family Tent, adjacent to the main tent. It features caricature and balloon artists, coloring pages, and a shorter line for food and drink for busy parents.

This year’s celebration under the tents is now a fully ticketed event, and the Office of Alumni Relations is encouraging people to buy their tickets at a discount by Oct. 3. Check out the full Homecoming schedule and ticket options at forever.fordham.edu/homecoming.

—Nicole LaRosa and Ryan Stellabotte

“Fr. Joyce preferred to spend most of his life ‘walking with the excluded.’ Those walks took him into psychiatric wards, a dangerous parish in Kingston, Jamaica, and into the prisons of Northern Ireland, where he reassured isolated, suffering prisoners that God had not forgotten them,” wrote Geoffrey Cobb, a former colleague. “He also served as chaplain in the Tombs, the notorious prison on Lower Manhattan, as well as working with runaway kids and former prostitutes at New York City Covenant House. … Fr. Jim blessed us all by spending a lifetime of giving and never counting the costs.” 

Father Joyce was born on Aug. 22, 1945, to John and Marie (O’Dea Joyce) in Brooklyn. After graduating from Regis High School in Manhattan, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1963. Twelve years later, he was ordained to the priesthood. Father Joyce spent decades of his life in service—as a prison chaplain at Rikers Island, as president of “New Jersey’s Jesuit high school,” and in positions of service beyond the tristate area, including West Africa and Jamaica. 

At Fordham, Father Joyce was an integral part in building the Bronx Irish History Project, a collection of interviews with Irish American members of the Bronx. Father Joyce had previously worked for peace, social justice, and reconciliation in Ireland in the 1970s. 

“Fr. Joyce had a profound love for Ireland and all its people, which I saw throughout our many discussions with the people we interviewed for Fordham’s Bronx Irish Oral History Project,” wrote Cobb, who is BIHP’s research director. “Though Fr. Joyce was dealing with pain from chemotherapy and stage three cancer, he brought humor, warmth, and great stories to our discussions of the Irish in the Bronx.”

Father Joyce also served as superior of Murray-Weigel Hall, a home for retired Jesuits at the Rose Hill campus, from 2009 to 2012. A year ago, he reflected on his time at Murray-Weigel. Father Joyce spent his final years of life in the home that he once led. 

“May he now rest from his labors in peace with Jesus whom he served so very well,” reads his full obituary from the U.S.A. East Province of the Society of Jesus.

In his new role as the inaugural director of Ignatian mission initiatives in the office of the vice president for mission integration and ministry, Parmach’s job is to help others across the University amplify the core principles of Jesuit education in their work.

“My good friend told me, ‘Rob, looking back on it, you always did a lot of, (what she would call) ‘Ignatian side hustles,’” he said with a smile. “All of those side hustles have now joined together to form your new main hustle.”

Parmach, who holds two graduate degrees from Fordham, also added that this reminded him of “what St. Ignatius poignantly shared—‘that which makes you feel the most alive in what you do is where God is.’”

“I’m trying to take theory, mission, and concepts and make [Ignatian spirituality] alive,” said Parmach, who started in his new role last fall. “One of my students said this and I think it’s quite to the point—‘basically, what we’re trying to do as a university is we’re trying to not just know the mission and talk about it, but feel it.’”

His work has been focused in three main areas: mission extension, which includes collaborating with other departments at Fordham; organizing programs, events, and activities such as Ignatian “Learn and Lunch” discussion series, “Mission in Action” food insecurity sandwich-making sessions for local food pantries, and Ignatian flourishing sessions on spirituality; and development/partnerships with groups and organizations outside the University, such as St. Ignatius School in the Bronx, that work with Fordham on community-engaged learning and youth mentoring.

Head, Heart, and Hands

One of the messages Parmach shares is how we should work every day to “instigate our head, our heart, and our hands.”

“I find that this position is a great encapsulation of that,” he said. “I’m involved with a variety of cool initiatives—[helping those]curious about meaningful ideas to connect to different groups of people, all furthering our shared Ignatian mission.”

As for the heart, he said that in this role he’s helping Fordham with “examining our beliefs and what our ethical structure is at the University, our mission—what we really have faith in and believe in.”

“And then your hands, you get out there and roll up your sleeves with other people putting our beliefs to action and fostering reciprocal learning,” he added.

Translating an Ignatian Mindset

One of the ways he’s trying to do that is by hosting events where participants, ranging from undergraduate students to staff members, from graduate students to alumni can learn about Ignatian values and mission and how to put them into practice. Through a partnership with the Career Center, Parmach has organized programs for students to help them “articulate and translate an Ignatian mindset to an employer.”

“We talk about care of the whole person and these Ignatian, Latin terms, but what does that mean to the secular employer? How does that translate on a cover letter, resume, interview skills?” he said.

Faustino Galante, FCRH ’20, a first-year student at Fordham Law School, has attended some of Parmach’s events. He went to one related to work-life balance that helped him learn about the Jesuit practices of self-reflection, which stuck with him.

“I think it’s really great to engage in reflection and contemplation with both alumni and younger students and law students,” he said. “Especially for undergrad students—it’s awesome to get out of the undergrad bubble,” and engage in “very natural” discussions with alumni, staff, and graduate students.

Parmach has also worked with the graduate and professional schools, partnering on a faculty and staff development series with Veronica Szczygiel, Ph.D., interim director of online learning in the Graduate School of Education, and hosting another series with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He’s also worked closely with the Gabelli School of Business and its Responsible Business Leadership Program. This semester, he ran mission-related workshops over two weekends for more than 200 graduate students as a part of their annual business retreat.

Parmach said that many of the students were really grateful to have been introduced to how our Jesuit educational mission applies to their professional and personal interior lives, lessons that they might not have learned elsewhere.

These workshops dove into the issues of ethics and helped attendees gain a deeper understanding of those they will encounter in their professional lives.

“For graduate business students, they want to make sure that they are in fact ethical, responsible business leaders that make a difference, that know people, that understand the different psychologies that make up their future employees, employers, associates,” he said.

Parmach has also partnered quite closely with the Center for Community Engaged Learning, specifically Vanessa Rotondo, who works as the associate director of campus engagement and senior advisor for Ignatian leadership.

“A third of my role is Ignatian student programming,” she said, noting that with Parmach in his new role, “we’re able to really amplify and intensify the kind of work that we’re doing,” she said.

That includes everything from hosting academic conversations on relevant social justice issues that intersect with Ignatian spirituality to public speaking events that help students work on inner struggles, such as fear of speaking to a crowd.

“There are students we work with very closely who are learning these Ignatian ideas with us,” Rotondo said. “And then there are students who might not have any interest in going to an event to hear the didactic story of who St. Ignatius was and how that relates to them.”

To make Ignatian history more appealing to all students, she said, they came up with an idea inspired by the Battle of Pamplona—the infamous battle where St. Ignatius was wounded by a cannonball, inspiring his spiritual journey. They hosted a dodgeball game that attracted more than 120 students.

“It’s things like that, where you’re kind of thinking outside the box and can meet different populations of students where they are, and then kind of infusing the Ignatian identity through that in a way that’s consumable,” she said.

Elevating Diverse Voices

One of the things Parmach is striving to do with the programmatic component is bring diverse and varied voices to the center, particularly those who aren’t often heard from.

“You talk to people who are so committed to this place, but maybe over the years no one has really asked them to speak at the table,” he said. “Maybe their position is not one in which they’re often giving talks, or they’re not teaching in front of a class. So one of my ambitions is to make sure that those people feel like they’re part of the conversation.”

Parmach emphasized the importance of this role in facilitating connections between groups that might not otherwise encounter each other.

“When I’m looking around, when we’re actually doing it and having the event and conversation, there are 25 people that otherwise perhaps wouldn’t know each other,” he said. “There’s a clerical secretary, talking to a law student, who was just talking to a tenured professor, who was speaking to a freshman who just started last week and saw the flier and just wants to meet people.”

An Ignatian Mission Council

Another way he’s facilitating these connections is through a Mission Council, which is a group of about 20 undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, and alumni that meet to discuss ideas for Ignatian programming and events.

Maria Terzulli, an administrator for the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, who has participated in the council and many of the other activities, said that she’s grateful for Parmach’s work.

“Rob has taken this new role in bringing the Fordham community together in many different ways—in intellectual ways, in wellness, in helping reach out to the community in tangible ways, gathering people young and old,” she said.

“From my point of view, you follow in Ignatius’s footsteps in doing deeds and works, more than preaching about them.”

Terzulli said that Parmach has done that, serving as an inspiration for her personally by helping her and others put Jesuit values into action.

“He is building community, he is making people aware that there are ways to follow the Ignatian tradition and the mission.”

Continuing Connections

Parmach said students seem to want to participate in events and activities to make connections, more so than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A thing that struck me is the real deep desire students have to connect to one another,” he said. “I think in the last couple of years because of COVID and the Zoom world, we’ve been doing a lot of reflection by ourselves but don’t have the opportunity to live that out with other people.”

Parmach hopes to continue to build on this desire to connect with more programs, partnerships, and activities next semester. He wants to expand the Ignatian mission workshops he’s offered to a variety of departments including, academic records, financial services, and admission. He also said he wants to continue to grow his partnership with Carol Gibney, L.M.S.W. in campus ministry, working with graduate students on thier spiritual-life development.

Parmach said he hopes his work is “not seen as an outside force, but rather something that’s central to the way teachers operate in and out of the classroom, the way guidance counselors and mentors work with graduate programs, and how we learn from and treat one another in mission as members of Fordham—so that over time the mission simply and naturally becomes who we are and how we operate as the Jesuit University of New York, nourishing one soul at a time with a shared sense of gratitude and grit.”

In 2010, she co-designed and led Evoke, a future-simulation game for the World Bank that was pitched as a 10-week “crash course in saving the world.” It attracted more than 19,000 players in 150-plus countries. She asked them to envision the year 2020 and consider what they’d do to help themselves and others amid compounding crises—raging wildfires, the collapse of a power grid due to severe weather and aging infrastructure, the rise of a group called Citizen X that spread disinformation and conspiracy theories online, and a global respiratory pandemic.

In early 2020, as these story lines were playing out in all-too-real life, McGonigal began hearing from people who had participated in her simulations. “I’m not freaking out,” one person wrote to her at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I already worked through the panic and anxiety when we imagined it 10 years ago.”

In her latest book, Imaginable (Spiegel and Grau, 2022), McGonigal lays out the tools people can use to “unstick” our minds and consider the “unthinkable,” balance our hopes and fears about the future; practice “hard empathy” to see the world from someone else’s point of view, and envision ourselves in various scenarios—some harrowing, some hopeful—in 2033.

The kind of “mental time travel” she espouses is not meant to be abstract. If it’s going to rain, it’s about “vividly imagining yourself in the rain, trying to pre-feel the rain on your skin.”

“The more vividly we imagine the worst-case scenario,” she writes, “the more motivated we feel to try to prevent it.”

McGonigal’s approach calls to mind St. Ignatius, the 16th-century founder of the Jesuits, who encouraged his companions to practice imaginative prayer—to put themselves in the Gospel stories, activating all their senses, as a means of feeling God’s presence in their lives and making choices about the future.

“A social simulation,” she writes, “is a springboard to making a better world.”

It’s a message McGonigal has been sharing for years, ever since she earned a B.A. in English from Fordham College at Lincoln Center in 1999 and a Ph.D. in performance studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. Citing research in cognitive and behavioral science, and drawing on her own experience as a game designer and futurist, in several books, including Reality Is Broken (Penguin, 2011), she has made a compelling case that games can be a platform for people to improve their lives and solve real-world problems.

For McGonigal, prognostication isn’t the point of imagining the future; it’s about stretching “our collective imagination, so we are more flexible, adaptable, agile, and resilient when the ‘unthinkable’ happens.” And it’s about developing a sense of “urgent optimism”—an ability to think “creatively and confidently right now about the things you could make, the solutions you could invent, the communities you could help.”

It’s an approach that Andrew Dana Hudson, FCLC ’09, shares. In his debut novel, Our Shared Storm (Fordham University Press, 2022), he imagines five possible climate futures for the world based on decisions we make between now and 2054, when the novel is set.

McGonigal’s message also calls to mind something Fordham’s new president, Tania Tetlow, has said about a Fordham Jesuit education being right for this moment, “when young people are passionate about wanting to question assumptions and fix systems.”

In 2009, a decade after graduating from Fordham, McGonigal told Fordham Magazine that “the Jesuit idea of being in service has stayed with me. I see the games I create as helping to create a better community.”

It’s an inspiring message—and her optimism is not just urgent, it’s necessary, generous, and contagious.

“Father Sosa is both deeply spiritual and entirely pragmatic. He comes from higher education, so he understands the challenges and opportunities we face,” said Tetlow. “We talked and laughed about all sorts of things, but especially about how we can deepen our Jesuit mission, even as we transition to lay leadership.”

A Personal Endorsement of President Tetlow

The meeting between Father General Sosa and Fordham’s newest president—the first woman and layperson to hold the position—was important for Fordham, said John Cecero, S.J., vice president for mission integration and ministry at Fordham. 

“From the perspective of the Society, it was probably the strongest endorsement of Tania and her leadership that one could possibly get,” Father Cecero said. 

The introduction between the two leaders is not unusual. Over the past two centuries, other superiors general have established relationships with Fordham and also visited the University campus. In 2013, Father General Sosa’s predecessor, Adolfo Nicolás, S.J., celebrated Mass at the University Church. In 1991, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., delivered the homily at the baccalaureate Mass and the benediction at commencement the next day. In 1966, Pedro Arrupe, S.J., served as the featured speaker at a special academic convocation celebrating Fordham’s 125th anniversary. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, past Fordham president Vincent O’Keefe, S.J., was elected assistant ad providentiam to Father General Arrupe in 1975 and later served as vicar general of the Society.  

From Father General Sosa’s Perspective: Challenges in Higher Education

The luncheon between Father General Sosa and Tetlow took place in his private dining room in the Jesuit Curia, where they were joined by Father Cecero, who has met Father General Sosa several times in his past role as provincial of the Jesuits’ USA Northeast Province. Armando Nuñez Jr., chair-elect of Fordham’s Board of Trustees; and Douglas Marcouiller, S.J., regional assistant for the USA Assistancy at the Jesuit Curia, also joined the meeting. 

Father General Sosa was elected as the 31st leader of the Jesuits in 2016. He has previously served in leadership positions for the Society, including director of a research and social action center and the Society’s provincial superior in his native Venezuela. He also participated in the Society’s 33rd general congregation, where he served as the youngest delegate at 34 years old. He is a scholar, political scientist, and former educator. 

Over a traditional Italian meal, Father General Sosa and the Fordham leaders discussed topics both light and heavy, including challenges facing Jesuit schools today, said Father Cecero.

“The traditional mission paradigm emphasized the delivery of a body of truths and traditions to the university community. Father General challenged us to shift that paradigm, emphasizing instead the need to engage in encounter and dialogue with all university constituents, so that out of that fruitful exchange, we will come together to a much richer understanding of who we are and why we exist,” said Father Cecero. 

An Ongoing Connection with Jesuit Leadership

After the luncheon, Father General Sosa met the entire Fordham delegation on the Jesuit Curia’s rooftop, where he greeted each person and then posed for a group photo in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. Then the delegation toured the Curia itself, including its chapel that contains the relics of Jesuit saints. 

Nuñez emphasized that establishing relationships with leaders like Father General Sosa is important in maintaining Fordham’s Jesuit identity. 

“As someone who is a big believer in the power of Jesuit education, I thought it was an incredible experience to be able to interact in person with the leader of the Jesuits,” said Nuñez, who graduated from the Gabelli School of Business. “Now that we no longer have a Jesuit president, it’s more important than ever for the board and the lay leadership of the University to be aware of the Jesuit mission and identity. I hope that connecting with the Jesuit leadership continues to be an ongoing tradition.”

This article is part of a series of stories about the Rome pilgrimage. Read the original full-length story here. 

She is the first layperson and first woman to lead the Jesuit University of New York in its 181-year history.

A graduate of Tulane University and Harvard Law School, she has been a changemaker for decades—as a scholar, professor, federal prosecutor, community advocate, and university leader. When the Board of Trustees announced her appointment in February, Tetlow said she was “honored beyond measure” to have been chosen as Fordham’s next president, and she pledged to come to the University with “my whole self—as a leader and a teacher, as a wife and a mom, and a person of faith.”

By way of introduction, here are 33 things to know about the 33rd president of Fordham University.

1. She is a trailblazer.

Even before she made history at Fordham, Tetlow blazed a trail at another Jesuit university, Loyola New Orleans, where she was the first woman and first layperson to serve as president. At Jesuit universities, she has said, mission “isn’t something we ask of the dozen priests on our campus; it’s the responsibility of each and every one of us.”

2. Fordham is where her parents met.

Tetlow grew up in New Orleans, but “Fordham is the reason that I exist,” she said in a video message to the University community in February. Her parents met as Fordham graduate students, and she was born in New York.

Tetlow’s late father, Louis Mulry Tetlow, an educator, clinical psychologist, and former Jesuit priest, earned his Ph.D. At Fordham in 1974, four years after earning a master’s degree from the University. Her mother, Elisabeth Meier Tetlow, is also a double Ram, classes of 1967 and 1970, having earned two of her five master’s degrees—in philosophy and theology—from Fordham. A biblical scholar, she later earned a J.D. from Loyola New Orleans and is the author of several books, including a two-volume work titled Women, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society.

At the February 10 press conference announcing her appointment as president, Tetlow shared that her mother was “very tickled” to receive an invitation, as a Fordham alumna, to attend the event unveiling the new president of the University.

3. She’s had a Jesuit Catholic education since birth.

As a newborn, Tetlow was welcomed at the Jesuit community on Marion Avenue in the Bronx, where her parents met. Her father had been a Jesuit for 17 years before leaving the order to start a family.

“I hope that in raising me and my sisters so steeped in the church, in the Jesuit charism, in the Jesuit way of proceeding, that he has really done right by both his family and by the Jesuits,” Tetlow said.

She said her parents instilled in her “an abiding curiosity to find God in all things, which meant going on walks as a child and learning all about the fractal geometry in the curl of a fern. They sang me to sleep with a Gregorian chant and taught me the absolute joy of learning.”

4. Trailblazing politician Lindy Boggs—champion of women’s rights, nine-term member of Congress, and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican—was her mentor.

In 1988, as a first-year student at Tulane, Tetlow wrote to her congresswoman, Lindy Boggs: “I would like to be you when I grow up. Could I please meet you?”

Boggs had represented Louisiana in Congress since 1973, when she succeeded her husband, Hale Boggs, who had disappeared following a plane crash in Alaska. In 1974, she ensured that women would be protected under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Two years later, she became the first woman to preside over a Democratic National Convention. She was, Tetlow later wrote, “a powerful politician of unquestioned integrity and famed charms.”

To the teenage Tetlow’s surprise, Boggs’ secretary called her to set up an appointment. “When the day finally arrived, my parents dropped me off at the federal building downtown for my appointment with destiny. I wore stockings, I think, and something approaching a suit,” she wrote in a 2012 essay, “Lindy and Me.”

Tetlow eventually worked as a summer intern in Boggs’ Washington, D.C., office, and when Boggs retired from Congress and accepted a position as counselor to the president of Tulane in 1991, Tetlow was her aide. “Lindy carefully tutored me about women in politics, about power and conscience, about the purpose of a life’s career,” Tetlow wrote.

In a 2019 interview on AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast, she described Boggs as “an incredibly devout Catholic” and an “absolutely brilliant, amazing diplomat. She taught me how to be virtuous and to live your faith in the world not by withdrawing from it and keeping yourself pure, but by engaging with power every day and mattering.”

5. She was 16 when she started college.

Growing up, Tetlow was often ahead of the curve. She skipped fifth grade, started high school at age 12, and four years later, enrolled at Tulane University, where she majored in American studies and earned a B.A. cum laude in 1992.

6. Scholarships transformed her life.

In 1988, Tetlow was a National Merit Scholar and also received a Dean’s Honor Scholarship to attend Tulane. Three years later, she earned a prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which “made all the difference” in her life, she said in 2019. “It was a high honor that helped me get into, and afford, Harvard Law School and pursue my dream of a career in public service.”

7. Hurricane Katrina changed her.

Last October, Tetlow was invited to preach at First Grace United Methodist Church in New Orleans. Founded in 2007, First Grace united two churches—one with a historically white congregation, one historically Black—that had been damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Tetlow told congregants that before the storm, she had “spent a lot of time building my sense of myself and my esteem on the idea of getting A’s in school and achieving things younger than most and … the praise I got and the important people that I knew.”

Amid the death, destruction, and despair caused by Katrina, she said, that suddenly felt like a castle made of sand, built on “pride and arrogance.” She ultimately found a way to “let go of my own self-pity and suffering,” she said, and “throw myself into the work, as we all did, of rebuilding and being there for people in their suffering.”

She said First Grace’s story, of congregations overcoming historical divisions and inertia to become one community, inspires her “to find the insight we lose when we’re not paying attention—the urgency that we need [to come together], not just in a crisis.”

8. She’s a former federal prosecutor.

After earning her J.D. from Harvard magna cum laude in 1995, Tetlow spent a year as a law clerk for U.S. Circuit Judge James Dennis and four years as an associate in the New Orleans office of Phelps Dunbar before becoming a federal prosecutor.

From 2000 to 2005, as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Louisiana, she specialized in general and violent crimes and major narcotics cases. She also worked closely with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to prosecute cases involving financial fraud, arson, wiretap investigations, and bank robberies.

9. She led Tulane’s Domestic Violence Clinic.

In 2005, Tetlow left the U.S. attorney’s office to become the Felder-Fayard Professor of Law and director of the Domestic Violence Clinic at Tulane Law School. She led the clinic for 10 years, securing $2.3 million in grants from the Department of Justice while teaching students to provide legal services to victims of domestic abuse, relationship violence, stalking, and sexual assault.

10. She helped revive the New Orleans Public Library System.

As chair of the New Orleans Library Board and Foundation, Tetlow spearheaded a campaign that raised $7 million to rebuild the city’s flooded public libraries after Hurricane Katrina.

11. She met her Scottish-born husband at a conference to promote cross-cultural understanding.

Tetlow and her husband, Gordon Stewart, met in England in 2005 and began dating several years later. They were delegates to the annual conference of the British-American Project, which promotes cross-cultural understanding among young leaders. “In our case it worked out really well,” Tetlow told The New York Times, which published the couple’s wedding announcement on October 3, 2009. Stewart, a master brewer and distiller from Glasgow, Scotland, told the Times he was “impressed when he first saw her on a panel giving a personal account of rescuing her parents in New Orleans after the hurricane two months before.”

12. Her research helped the U.S. Department of Justice develop new anti-discrimination policies.

As a law scholar, Tetlow focused on equal protection, particularly race and gender discrimination. “It’s always mattered to me,” she once said, “to be the kind of academic who had an impact on the world.”

In “Discriminatory Acquittal,” a 2009 article published in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, she described the long history, from the Emmett Till trial to Rodney King and the present day, of juries discriminating against Black victims. She also described how juries use acquittals to “punish female victims of rape and domestic violence for failing to meet gender norms.” Recognizing the unconstitutionality of such acquittals, she argued, would help protect victims. Lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil rights division agreed. They credited the article with helping to inspire a new focus on discriminatory underenforcement of the law in its investigations of police departments.

13. The State Department asked her to join a U.S. delegation to China.

In 2014, Tetlow was one of four people chosen by the State Department to take part in the U.S.–China People-to-People Exchange program, which promotes discussion and collaboration on topics not typically covered in formal government summits. In Beijing, Tetlow shared her expertise on U.S. laws on domestic violence and the support of survivors. She has also provided technical assistance to family law clinics in Rwanda and Iran.

14. She led a complete turnaround of the New Orleans Police Department’s Special Victims Section.

In late 2014, after the New Orleans inspector general found that the city’s police department was misclassifying rape cases as lesser offenses and not properly documenting evidence or following up on cases involving sex crimes, then mayor Mitch Landrieu asked Tetlow to lead the Sexual Assault Reform Advisory Committee.

He “charged us with creating immediate and fundamental systemic reform,” she wrote in an August 2015 article in the New Orleans Advocate after publishing the committee’s report. The report “does not present the typical set of flowery proposals” but instead “lists dozens of practical reforms” to increase the number of detectives in the sex crimes and child abuse units and “create a lasting framework to ensure the quality of their work.”

In June 2016, the inspector general issued a follow-up report: “What was bad before is very good now,” he said. “It’s a remarkable turnaround.”

15. She helped make workforce management policy decisions for New Orleans.

Tetlow served on several boards in New Orleans, including the Civil Service Commission. In that role, she launched a compensation and staffing study of the entire city workforce, made workforce management policy decisions, and adjudicated appeals—all in an effort to make city government more efficient and effective.

16. She sings opera and Gregorian chant.

Tetlow has taken voice lessons on and off throughout her life, and she’s even sung professionally on occasion. At her Missioning Mass on the eve of her inauguration as president of Loyola New Orleans, she led the Jesuits and the choir in singing the “Salve Regina,” a hymn the Jesuits have sung for nearly 500 years.

“If nothing else, I sing really well for a university president,” she said with a laugh on the AMDG podcast in 2019, where she also shared that singing opera makes her feel alive.

17. She took an ‘untraditional path’ to university leadership.

In 2015, she served briefly as associate provost of international affairs at Tulane before being named senior vice president and chief of staff to the president, Michael Fitts—a role not typically seen as a prelude to a presidency but one that gave her a deeper understanding of the full breadth of the university. As one of Fitts’ top strategic advisers, she played a key role in significant advances in admissions, rankings, diversity, research strength, and fundraising. She also spearheaded efforts to make meaningful progress on race and equity, and on addressing campus sexual assault.

In March, NY1 featured Tetlow in a Women’s History Month segment highlighting “modern-day trailblazers.” The host asked her about her penchant for making history. “I think I jumped ahead in some ways by taking an untraditional path,” Tetlow said. “There are many obstacles to women becoming deans and provosts, so instead I was a law professor and then chief of staff to a university president.”

18. She was a transformative leader at Loyola.

Tetlow took the helm at Loyola New Orleans in August 2018, becoming the first woman and first layperson to lead the 110-year-old Jesuit institution. She steered the university through a remarkable economic turnaround after the most financially difficult period in its history. Under her stewardship, Loyola improved its bond rating, increased student retention, saw enrollment rise, and expanded online, graduate, and professional programs.

19. Her vision extends beyond campus.

At Loyola, she led the implementation of a strategic plan for inclusive excellence at the university, where ethnic minorities represent 51% of all undergraduates. And at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she oversaw the creation of an undergraduate nursing program in partnership with a New Orleans health system.

20. She was the unanimous choice for Fordham.

On February 10, after a national search, the Fordham Board of Trustees unanimously elected Tetlow to serve as the 33rd president of the Jesuit University of New York.

“The Board of Trustees and the search committee were deeply impressed by Tania Tetlow from the moment we met her,” Robert D. Daleo, GABELLI ’72, chair of the board, wrote in a message to the University community. “She is deeply rooted in, and a strong proponent of, Ignatian spirituality, and will be a champion of Fordham’s Jesuit, Catholic mission and identity. She has a deep understanding of and comprehensive vision for undergraduate liberal arts and sciences, the Gabelli School of Business, Fordham Law, and all of the graduate and professional schools of the University.”

21. She is a student of history—and of the moral choices we make in ‘a thousand tiny daily tests’ of faith and courage.

In June, Tetlow said that she was reading Msgr. Thomas Shelley’s book Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 and gaining a deeper understanding of the factors and decisions that have fueled the University’s growth.

“There are some who find looking back on history a self-righteous exercise in 20/20 hindsight,” she once wrote, but it teaches us that “moral choices in life are rarely labeled, ‘heroes turn this way, villains the other.’

“The most critical of decisions come in the form of a thousand tiny daily tests … of faith and courage. We learn more when we really put ourselves in the shoes … of those who made the wrong choices. We gain the humility necessary to acknowledge our own blind spots. We gain resolve to see through the fog of denial and get it right the next time, to think about how our grandchildren will look back at our own heroism or failure.”

22. She’s both practical and visionary.

Joseph M. Mcshane, S.J., president emeritus of Fordham, has described his successor as a dear friend, “the perfect choice” for Fordham, and a “great, great administrator” who brought Loyola New Orleans out of “a very difficult moment” four years ago and “really transformed the place.”

“She’s practical and visionary at the same time—a rare combination,” he said, noting that she “has in abundance the qualities of leadership one needs to run a major university, among them discernment, patience, decisiveness, self-awareness, and magnanimity.

“Her commitment to Jesuit pedagogy and to Fordham’s Jesuit, Catholic mission is both deep and well-informed. I shall rest easy with her in the office I have occupied for almost two decades.”

23. Experts on higher education are impressed by the skill set she brings to the presidency.

In May, Tetlow was a guest on the popular higher education podcast Future U, alongside Holy Cross president Vincent Rougeau. Both of them are the first laypeople to lead their respective Jesuit schools, and they’re also both trained as lawyers, which gives them a special kind of preparation for the challenges of leading large, complex organizations.

Jeff Selingo, co-host of the podcast, identified three key roles university presidents must play to succeed: chief storyteller, chief resource allocator, and chief operating officer—all of which, he said, are things that lawyers could do “very, very well” based on their training, especially lawyers who, like Tetlow, “have a good public presence.”

24. She’s the head of Fordham’s first-ever ‘first family.’

Tetlow and her husband, Gordon, have a 10-year-old daughter, who Tetlow said is “really excited about the family adventure.” Tetlow is also stepmother to Gordon’s teenage son, who lives in Scotland but plans to visit often. And the family includes Archie, a golden retriever who is “still an exuberant puppy,” Tetlow said. She joked that maybe he can learn to be an emotional support dog for students someday. “We are all excited to be part of Fordham,” she said, “to be home.”

25. Her uncle Joseph Tetlow, S.J., is a renowned expert on Jesuit spirituality.

Tetlow has described her uncle Joseph Tetlow, S.J., as her “personal guru for all wisdom in the world.” He baptized her, presided over her and Gordon’s wedding ceremony in 2009, and baptized their daughter, Lucy, in 2012.

For eight years, Father Tetlow served in Rome as head of the Secretariat for Ignatian Spirituality. He has held other important roles, from president of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley to associate editor of America magazine. He is currently writing full time at the Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House in Lake Dallas, Texas.

26. She sees parallels between the Big Easy and the Big Apple.

Soon after moving from New Orleans to New York in June, Tetlow visited Arthur Avenue, the Cloisters, and Rockaway Beach. And she started to see a connection between the two cities that she hadn’t noticed on her many visits to New York.

“One thing I’m realizing driving around is that—I don’t know what your vision of New Orleans is, but it is a gritty port city full of German, Irish, and Italian Catholic immigrants,” she said. “There’s much about the neighborhoods here that makes me feel at home.”

When asked which city has better food, she said, “New Orleans food is extraordinary, and I can’t wait to cook for you”—gumbo is her signature dish—“but New York has amazing food from every country in the world.” Part of what drew her to Fordham, she said, is a belief not only in the power and quality of a Fordham Jesuit education but also in the “limitless and thrilling” possibilities of the “most exciting city in the world.”

27. She’s a thought leader and advocate for young people.

In response to issues of equity in higher education, she has penned several op-eds in national media outlets advocating justice and increased support for the country’s young people. Last December, for example, she called on Congress to increase Pell Grants, creating something like a new GI Bill to help “reboot the economy and preserve it from lasting damage” amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Think about the impact the GI Bill had on so many of our families and the trajectory of American greatness,” she wrote.

28. Before beginning her service as president, she made a weeklong Ignatian pilgrimage to Rome to mark the 500th anniversary of the conversion of St. Ignatius.

In late June, Tetlow joined a Fordham delegation to Rome, where she met with Arturo Sosa, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus; Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state; and Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, Vatican prefect for Catholic education. She also walked in the footsteps of Ignatius, the founder of the Society of Jesus, who spent 15 years in Rome.

29. She believes Jesuit education inspires people to get into ‘good trouble,’ as the late civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis used to say. And it’s right in tune with the zeitgeist.

In May, the co-hosts of the Future U podcast asked Tetlow about the viability of Jesuit education today. She said it’s not only timeless, backed by “the credibility we get from [nearly] 500 years of academic excellence,” but also right for the moment, when young people are passionate about wanting to question assumptions and fix systems. “The Jesuits have gotten into ‘good trouble’ for centuries by being willing to … ask the hard questions … to really make a difference in the world. That’s who we are in our DNA.”

30. Fordham, she believes, is an antidote to an increasingly divided world.

Tetlow has described the political moment as “treacherous,” with people “cleaving into tribes and drowning in polemic.” Fordham is a key to moving forward together, she insists.

“If you were to design an antidote to a world that is increasingly divided, it would be a place that brings together the best and brightest from every corner of the Earth and teaches them to learn from each other,” she said. “It would be a place that believes in truth and works tirelessly to find it; a place that tries to solve the toughest of problems with science and technology and, most of all, by understanding humanity—what drives us, how we structure our communities and economies … how we build a common good with ethics, empathy, and faith.”

31. She’s excited about getting to know—and learn from—the Fordham community.

In her introductory press conference, Tetlow said she’s excited to talk with faculty about their research and the students they love, and to find out from staff about the ways they constantly work to make Fordham better, and the ideas they have for the future. Most of all, though, she’s excited to connect with students—“to be part of your community, to have you push me, to teach me things, to listen hard to you, to be part of the joy that you bring to the work that we do.”

32. She’ll soon hit the road to introduce herself to alumni.

Tetlow is eager to meet alumni, she said, “to hear about how Fordham changed your life” and “not only gave you the tools to succeed … but to understand that success is about … the life of integrity that you lead, the change you make in the world.” Her tour will begin on August 25 with a reception in Spring Lake, New Jersey. After welcoming alumni and families to campus for Homecoming on September 17, she plans to attend events in Washington, D.C.; London; Fairfield County, Connecticut; and New Orleans. In 2023, she’s planning stops in Phoenix, Chicago, California, and Florida. Learn more and register to attend a reception in your area at forever.fordham.edu/presidential.

33. Her formal inauguration will take place in October.

The University community will celebrate Tania Tetlow’s inauguration during a series of events beginning with the President’s Inaugural Ball for students on September 16, the night before Homecoming, and culminating with the Missioning Mass and installation ceremony on Friday, October 14. Learn more at fordham.edu/inauguration.

These Catholic historians, theologians, poets, and activists fought against issues in the early to mid-1900s that still exist today, said Moore, including European xenophobia and racism in the United States. Among them are Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay and Gabriela Mistral, the first Nobel prize laureate from Latin America. Their friendships with like-minded colleagues took place not only in person, but also in other forms of consciousness, like memory, imagination, and prayer. In a Q&A with Fordham News, Moore describes how these spiritual friendships fueled their activism and how today’s activists can learn from their predecessors who lived more than a century ago. 

How is your book relevant to today’s world?

The people in my book took stands on many issues that are still with us today. For example, poet Claude McKay was a Black Catholic who wrote prolifically about police brutality and white “friends” who are sympathetic with their Black friends, yet do nothing to help. He wrote about this more than 80 years ago in ways that are remarkably descriptive of our own time. Another example is in chapter three, where I write about a group of activists who countered anti-Islamic sentiment among Catholics and tried to come up with a more humane and sophisticated way of understanding Islam. Many of these issues continue to assail us today, but they were engaged very creatively by this early generation of activists and thinkers. As we work today to create a more inclusive world, we don’t have to start from scratch. We should look at some of the experiments that took place in the earlier part of the last century and learn from their mistakes and successes.

What can they teach us about navigating today’s politics? 

It’s really tough to engage in today’s politics. But the Catholic activists were very clear and convinced that to do the difficult work of political solidarity and making a change in the world, you have to be energized and animated by feelings of love, support, joy, pleasure, and interpersonal connection. They were very explicit that friendship was the fuel for their work. Their political organizations included the word amitié, which means friendship in French. Their political work, art and writing, and even their religious lives were sustained by what they called “spiritual friendship.” There was no way to do their work without that. 

Do they have any advice about negotiating one’s faith? 

There are those of us—myself included—who have a complicated relationship with Roman Catholicism. We are members of the Catholic church, yet we are disappointed by the church hierarchy and clerical culture, especially in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis. But these Catholic artists and activists also felt, at times, incredible disappointment and frustration with their church leadership. They often spoke out against racism, European colonialism, and anti-Semitism, in contrast to a church leadership that too often stayed silent, advocated obedience, or upheld violent societal structures. They reclaimed our Catholic heritage and made it more multicultural and just, and they point a way forward for people who might feel similarly today. 

Spiritual friendship was an important part of the activists’ lives. How did they maintain those relationships? And how did they enhance their work?

I discovered this world of friendship while reviewing some historical archives. I found some of the activists’ files, and I could see and touch all the letters that they wrote to their friends. But they weren’t simply letters. Many had sacred objects tucked inside: holy medallions, little crosses made of twigs, pictures that they painted or drew. There was a sacred materiality to both the letters and objects. Letters to friends weren’t just a casual thing—this was how holiness was communicated to one another, in these things that were touched, felt, and mailed back and forth, sometimes across the Atlantic. 

One friendship I might highlight is the friendship between Gabriela Mistral, a poet who became the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Jacques Maritain, a Catholic philosopher. They first met in Paris, where people gathered from all over the world. Gabriela was a writer who was seeking intellectual collaboration in the interwar period. She became friends with Jacques, who shared similar values, including rejecting typical heterosexual matrimony and having children. Jacques was married to a woman, but they shared a vow of celibacy and never had children. Gabriela was a gay woman who never married and raised the son of a family member who had died. They both lived their lives in disjunction from the mainstream family norms at the time. 

Gabriela was very involved in bringing Jacques’ ideas about democracy and antifascism for Catholics into Latin America. She ensured that his publications were translated into Spanish and disseminated in Chilean universities, seminaries, and bookstores and helped to develop a more liberal Catholicism during this period. Her name is hidden in the history of Catholic thought, whereas Jacques is very famous. But it is through their friendship, especially their long distance correspondence, that his ideas became internationalized. 

How does your book connect to Fordham and its Jesuit mission? 

I believe the women and men in my book model the kind of Catholicism that Fordham would be proud of. They shared a passion for connecting with the long roots of the Catholic heritage, but in a way that cultivated openness to difference and courage to disrupt the status quo. These men and women took personal risks to live lives of solidarity with those who were vulnerable in the 20th century. This is the kind of faith we talk about a lot at Fordham. 

You’ve said that these friendships were sustained over long distances and long periods of time. Did that remind you of our attempts to stay connected during the pandemic? 

Many of my characters had close friendships, but they spent years apart. Some were sent into exile in Brazil; others returned to Harlem during World War II. Yet they sustained friendships over long periods of time through the realm of memory, imagination, and correspondence. It was possible for them to sustain friendships that weren’t face to face, the way many of us did during the pandemic, and that was comforting to me. 

What is a key takeaway from your book, especially for a non-religious audience? 

The people in this past world, although chronologically distant from us, address many issues that face us today. They were often critical of the church, state, and racist institutions, but they experimented with other modes of belonging, connection, and solidarity. 

Some of their utopian experiments failed, and they didn’t always live up to the ideals they had for themselves. One example is Maison Simone Weil, founded in 1962 by Nazi resistor Marie-Magdeleine Davy. It was a utopian international dormitory and summer community where students from all over the world would gather in rural France to discuss many of the pressing ideas of the 1960s: peace, war, global spirituality, existentialism. The goal was to forge relationships among international students and contribute to peacemaking. It was a successful project while it lasted, but shuttered its doors after only a few years.

Yet the activists in my book constantly experimented with alternative modes of living, in connection to one another and to God. These are people who attempted to change the world because they were dissatisfied with the status quo—the way many of us still are today.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Because, we’d say, he was a fulcrum in the lives of those who formed themselves around him. Because he paid us the compliment of driving us hard as students and then, in the decades to come, sustaining us individually and collectively with the shared bread of his friendship—like one of the righteous souls that the Talmud is always mysteriously crediting with holding this world together.

At least that’s how it seemed to those who knew him.

So we gathered on a cloudy day during the lingering pandemic in a stone church with its vault of azure blue. We warbled out upbeat songs, singing of alabaster cities gleaming, undimmed by human tears; of a tender Lord who extracts us when we’re snared like a bird in a fowler’s trap; and of the biggest promise ever made: resurrection after death.

Most of us had begun as Ray’s students at one Jesuit university or another, Fordham included. He was blatantly magnetic, a man-about-campus with a playful smile and form-fitting Izod shirt. But his main devotions were interior: to intellectual pursuits and his vocation as a priest. He celebrated Mass with a marked sincerity and taught his classes with a passion. He published his writing—rigorous journalism with a disarming dash of memoir—in national publications. And in his music-filled apartment, next to the armchair, was an elbow-high stack of magazines and books. He would read them all, sometimes late into the night after a steak-and-martini dinner with friends at an Arthur Avenue restaurant, rebuilding the stack as he went.

Somehow, Ray made his life of the mind seem glamorous—like if you yourself couldn’t get in on it, you’d keel over from an acute lack of fulfillment. Then one day he’d tap you on the shoulder, so to speak, and allow that he saw something in you. This was both thrilling and nerve-racking for the way it made you want to measure up. It embarked you on what felt like an adventure of spiritual striving and cold ocean swimming, high literary endeavor and incessant bonhomie. The bonus was membership in a community not of his followers but his brethren.

Years later, at the memorial at Fordham, a few of us sang his praises. “Ray was not a Catholic apologist but he was also not an apologetic Catholic,” said Kevin Doyle, FCRH ’78, a lawyer who has applied himself to defending men on death row. “He ached to be generative,” added Anne Gearity, TMC ’70, GSS ’74, about Ray’s zeal for teaching. She herself is a therapist who teaches children to cope with trauma.

Author Eileen Markey, FCRH ’98, noted the absence of Ray’s prize student, Jim Dwyer, FCRH ’79, who’d been one of his closest friends. A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of impeccably chiseled prose, Jim had been lined up long ago to deliver the eulogy. But before a memorial could be held, he died of cancer, a loss so devastating that it bordered on the absurd. All the more reason, Eileen observed, to gather at liturgy and find shelter with each other.

Afterward at a reception, there were mini muffins and comforting conversation, which is how I imagine the anteroom of heaven. Still, life haunts you. I kept dwelling on what Kevin Schroth, a professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, had said at the Mass about the last two years of his uncle’s life: “Ray told me he was at peace with his condition, that he understood why he had to go through it.”

On a summer day in 2018, Ray was taking a walk on Webster Avenue when a stroke knocked him to the pavement. Remember those righteous men and women of the Talmud? This is how they quietly move among us, keeping chaos at bay through the practice of some discipline, until the chaos comes for them. Ray lost his ability to walk and write and gained a problem with swallowing that put him on a feeding tube. He entered a season of suffering. And yet, he clung to delight. He’d still beam at the sight of friends at his door, lifting his head as if lit from within. As if no loss in the world could keep him from loving you.

—Jim O’Grady, FCRH ’82, recently joined NPR’s Planet Money as a host and reporter after more than a decade at WNYC, where he earned numerous honors, including two Edward R. Murrow Awards. He is also the host of the podcast Blindspot: The Road to 9/11, a co-production of HISTORY and WNYC Studios.

Read more about Father Schroth’s life and legacy in our full obituary, published on July 7, 2020: “Raymond Schroth, S.J., Who Taught Generations of Journalists, Dies at 86.”  

Scenes from the memorial Mass and reception held at Fordham on October 23, 2021. Photos by Bruce Gilbert

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“Father Koterski was a model Jesuit, an exemplary priest, a companion both in the Society of Jesus and in our mission, and a dear friend,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Wonderfully, he had the kind of death every priest prays for: He died while he was speaking from the heart of the Lord whom he loved and served all his life. He is now at home with that same Lord.”

In 1992, Father Koterski joined Fordham’s philosophy department. Over the next three decades, he held many positions, including chair of the philosophy department, director of the master’s program in philosophical resources, and secretary of the Faculty Senate. He taught more than 20 undergraduate and graduate courses in metaphysics, ethics, and the history of medieval philosophy, including two specialized courses for the honors program. He was awarded several honors himself, including a summer faculty fellowship and an undergraduate teaching award. 

“Father McShane would sometimes comment, ‘Koterski never sleeps.’ You just wonder where he got all the time to do all that he’s doing: teaching his classes, living and working at Queen’s Court, and all that he does for his students,” said Thomas Scirghi, S.J., associate professor of theology.  

At the time of his death, Father Koterski served as associate professor of philosophy and editor in chief of International Philosophical Quarterly, a Fordham peer-reviewed philosophy journal. He was also the master of Queen’s Court Residential College, where he served as an academic adviser and counselor for first-year students over the past two decades. 

For as much as he taught his students, he learned much from them as well. Twice a year, he hosted a formal student debate at Queen’s Court. Four nights a week, he hosted “Knight Court,” where students presented any subject of their choice for 10 minutes. One student taught him the rules of rugby; another taught him how to calculate wind chill factor. A third student introduced him to Bollywood and performed a song in a male and falsetto voice. He also accompanied students on Broadway trips, including “Phantom of the Opera” and “How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.” 

“We have oodles of fun together. But the [main]idea is integrating their studies and social life,” Father Koterski said in a 2012 “Jesuits in Conversation” video. 

Father Koterski was an Ohio native who grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in classical languages from Xavier University. He earned three advanced degrees—a master’s in philosophy, a doctor of philosophy, and a master of divinity—from Saint Louis University and the Weston School of Theology, now known as the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. In 1984, he entered the Society of Jesus at age 30. Eight years later, he was ordained a priest. 

“I think of myself as part of the late bloomers’ club,” Father Koterski said in 2012, “and I’d love to encourage anybody else to join the club.” 

In phone interviews, his colleagues described him as a fun-loving fellow with a deeply resonant voice that could have belonged to a radio announcer. He was a reticent man who avoided small talk, said Father Scirghi, but once he started talking about academia or societal issues, conversation easily flowed. He combined faith and fun in his teaching, including one Halloween where students gathered at the Jesuit cemetery on the Rose Hill campus and learned about the holiday’s religious significance while sipping hot apple cider, said Father Scirghi. But what stood out about Father Koterski, said those who knew him, was his generosity. 

“He had an office a few doors down from me. He would be in there for long hours, meeting with students during office hours and outside of office hours, giving spiritual direction to people over the phone or on Zoom,” said Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., professor of philosophy. “He was always willing to help when there were any problems to deal with.” 

In addition, he stayed in touch with prior students and continued to guide them, said an alumnus.  

“A few years after I graduated, I took a more serious approach to my faith, and Father Koterski made himself available. He was willing to talk through difficult issues and approach things with intellectual rigor, but more importantly, a gentle spirit,” said Jared Woodard, GSAS ’13. 

Outside of Fordham, Father Koterski lived a rich academic life that spanned the U.S. and several continents. He traveled to California, Texas, Missouri, Hong Kong, England, and Guam to teach courses on subjects he cared deeply about. He regularly went to Haiti for missionary work, and he often worked with groups of nuns around New York, where he presided at Mass or led retreats. He served in leadership positions for many religious and academic organizations, including a two-term presidency of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. His sixty-page curriculum vitae is a testament to the hundreds of books, articles, homilies, lectures, and conferences that encompassed his life.

“While an outstanding scholar and teacher, Father Joe Koterski was above all else a Jesuit priest. In Psalm 85(86), David prays, ‘Domine…simplex fac cor meum’ (O Lord…make my heart simple): a line that sums up Father Koterski’s life,” his longtime friend John Kezel, retired director of the Campion Institute, wrote in an email. “He was simply always there when you needed him—for advice, for companionship, for prayer. In all my years of friendship, I never heard Father Joseph Koterski say ‘no’ to anyone.”

In a 2015 interview with America Magazine, a reporter asked Father Koterski what he wanted people to take away from his life and work. 

“A greater love for God, a greater desire for union with Jesus Christ, a greater respect for the teachings of the church and a greater ability to reason in a sound way as a grateful response to God’s gift to us of the power of reasoning,” he said. 

Father Koterski’s wake will be held on Tuesday, August 17, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the University Church, located at 2691 Southern Blvd, Bronx, N.Y., 10458. The funeral will begin at 11 a.m. at the same location. Proof of vaccination must be provided for admittance to campus. Per Fordham University policy, masks must be worn while in the University Church. If driving, please enter through the gate on Southern Boulevard, across from the New York Botanical Garden.

—Chris Gosier contributed reporting to this story.