College president Theodore Hesburgh

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh transformed the University of Notre Dame into a school known almost as much for academics as for football, even if it meant challenging popes, presidents or legendary football coaches.

And he did it while championing human rights around the globe, from civil rights close to home - he joined hands with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a 1964 rally and opened campus doors to women - to supporting Third World development. The work often took him far from campus, where the joke became that while God was everywhere, Father Hesburgh was everywhere but Notre Dame.

But Father Hesburgh, who died late Thursday at age 97, spent enough time on campus during his 35 years at the helm to build Notre Dame into an academic power. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine a decade into his tenure for an article describing him as the most influential figure in the reshaping of Catholic education, and he was awarded 150 honorary degrees. During his tenure, student enrollment spiked and the school's endowment grew from $9 million to $350 million.

The charming and personable priest found as much ease meeting with heads of state as he did with students. His aim was constant: Better people's lives.

"I go back to an old Latin motto, opus justitiae pax: Peace is the work of justice," Father Hesburgh said in a 2001 interview. "We've known 20 percent of the people in the world have 80 percent of the goodies, which means the other 80 percent have to scrape by on 20 percent."

Father Hesburgh's goal coming out of seminary was to be a Navy chaplain during World War II, but he was instead sent to Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to pursue a doctorate.

He then returned to Notre Dame, where he quickly rose to become head of the theology department, then executive vice president. He was named president in 1952, at age 35.

His passion for civil rights earned him a spot as a founding member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in 1957. President Richard Nixon fired him from the commission in 1972, after Father Hesburgh famously challenged Nixon's record.

"I said, 'I ended this job the way that I began 15 years ago - fired with enthusiasm,' " Hesburgh recalled in 2007.

It wasn't his only challenge to authority. When the Vatican demanded conformity to church dogma, Father Hesburgh insisted that Notre Dame remain an intellectual center for theological debate. And in 1949, he took on powerful football coach Frank Leahy while reorganizing the athletic department.

In 2000, when Father Hesburgh was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, President Bill Clinton called him "a servant and a child of God, a genuine American patriot and a citizen of the world."

Father Hesburgh wrote several books, including the best-selling God, Country, Notre Dame, sharing his vision of the contemporary Catholic school.

"The Catholic university should be a place," he wrote, "where all the great questions are asked, where an exciting conversation is continually in progress, where the mind constantly grows as the values and powers of intelligence and wisdom are cherished and exercised in full freedom."

In keeping with that philosophy, Notre Dame underwent profound changes under Father Hesburgh. Control of the school shifted in 1967 from the Congregation of the Holy Cross priests, who founded the school, to a lay board. The school ended a 40-year absence in football postseason bowl games and used the proceeds from the 1970 Cotton Bowl to fund minority scholarships.

In 1972, Notre Dame admitted its first undergraduate women - which Father Hesburgh called one of his proudest accomplishments.

A public tribute will be held Wednesday evening at the Joyce Center on campus. A private, simple funeral will be held Wednesday on campus, following a wake for invited guests Tuesday evening.