Father Drinan, ex-congressman, Jesuit and law professor, dead at 86

Published: 2007-01-29

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Jesuit Father Robert F. Drinan, the first Catholic priest to vote in the U.S. Congress, received praise and censure during his lifetime for his active involvement in politics. Father Drinan, 86, died Jan. 28 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, where he had been treated for pneumonia and congestive heart failure for the past 10 days. Funeral arrangements were pending Jan. 29. "Few have accomplished as much as Father Drinan and fewer still have done so much to make the world a better place," said T. Alex Aleinikoff, dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, where Father Drinan had taught since 1981. "His life was one fully devoted to the service of others -- in the church, in the classroom and in Congress," Aleinikoff said in a statement. But others saw Father Drinan as less praiseworthy and his celebration of a Jan. 3 Mass at Trinity University in honor of new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who supports legal abortion, brought new criticism. In his Web log, or blog, for First Things magazine Jan. 19, Father Richard John Neuhaus called him "a Jesuit who, more than any other single figure, has been influential in tutoring Catholic politicians on the acceptability of rejecting the church's teaching on the defense of innocent human life."

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