The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has unveiled its 2017 commemorative stamps, one of which will Father Theodore M. Hesburgh (1917-2015), long-time president of Notre Dame University and an important figure in the civil rights movement.

According to the USPS, the stamp will feature an oil-on-panel painting of Father Hesburgh which is housed on the University of Notre Dame campus where he served as president for 35 years.

“Appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1957, Father Hesburgh helped compile reports on racial discrimination and the denial of voting rights that resulted in the Omnibus Civil Rights Act of 1964,” the USPS reports. “A champion of causes ranging from education to immigration reform to the plight of underdeveloped nations, Father Hesburgh worked with many important organizations that reflected his beliefs.”

Born in Syracuse, New York on May 25, 1917, Father Hesburgh was educated at the University of Notre Dame and Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross in Sacred Heart basilica on the Notre Dame campus on June 24, 1943. After receiving a doctorate in sacred theology from the Catholic University of America, he joined the faculty of Notre Dame in 1945 as a teacher in the Religion Department and served as chaplain to World War II veterans.

He was eventually appointed as head of that department in 1948, and the following year was appointed executive vice president in the administration of Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., the University’s president. At the age of 35 in June 1952, he was named the 15th president of Notre Dame.

During Hesburgh’s 35 years at the helm of the nation’s premier Catholic university, the school grew from an annual operating budget of $9.7 million to $176.6 million with student enrollment nearly doubling during that time. One of his most notable accomplishments was the admission of women to the undergraduate program in 1972.

According to his official obituary, Father Hesburgh would play an active and influential role in national and international affairs during and after his presidency, holding 16 presidential appointments which involved issues ranging from civil rights to campus unrest. He was a charter member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, created in 1957, and he chaired the commission from 1969 to 1972 until his criticism of the Nixon administration’s civil rights record caused him to be replaced.

An indefatigable champion of social justice issues, his fund-raising efforts help to avert mass starvation in Cambodia between 1979 and 1981 and led to the international condemnation of nuclear weapons.

Father Hesburgh also served several popes as permanent Vatican City representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. At the request of Pope Paul VI, he built the Ecumenical Institute at Tantur, Jerusalem in 1972 which Notre Dame continues to operate. Paul VI appointed him head of the Vatican representatives attending the 20th anniversary of the United Nations’ human rights declaration in Teheran, Iran, in 1968. In 1983, St. John Paul II appointed him to the Pontifical Council for Culture, charged with finding ways in which the saving message of the Gospel could be preached effectively in the world’s variegated cultures.

It’s also interesting to note that Father Hesburgh often earned himself the distinction of being the first Catholic priest to fill certain positions, such as when he served as director of the Chase Manhattan Bank and as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. He was also the first priest to serve in a formal diplomatic role for the U.S. government when he was appointed as an ambassador to the U.N. Conference on Science and Technology for Development in 1979.

He was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1964 and a Congressional Gold Medal in the year 2000.

Even after his retirement in 1987, he stayed busy, beginning his golden years by writing an autobiography entitled God, Country, Notre Dame, which became a national best seller.

A consistent theme in his writings was his vision of the contemporary Catholic university as touching the moral as well as the intellectual dimensions of scholarly inquiry, his obituary states.

He once wrote: “The Catholic university should be a place 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.”

His image and legacy will be honored in 2017 on an official commemorative stamp, joining a distinguished group of other priests who were similarly honored, such as Father Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town and Father Felix Varela, the Cuban-born priest and independence leader who was declared Venerable in 2012. Father John P. Washington, an army chaplain who was killed when a German U-boat sank the ship he was sailing upon, was also awarded a stamp in 1948.

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