Remembering Father Michael Scanlan, TOR

An Excerpt from

“A Father to Us All: Remembering Father Michael Scanlan, TOR”

By Emily Stimpson Chapman

…Ask a dozen alumni about Father Mike, and you’ll get a dozen stories similar to mine. That’s just what he did. He prayed for people. He comforted people. He helped them to feel, if only for a moment, the same deep, abiding trust in Jesus Christ that he felt. And through it all, he brought healing—sometimes to bodies, sometimes to souls, and, as president, to an entire institution. He was, in the most profound sense of the word, a father. And that, more than anything else, was what he strove to be.

Father Mike left Franciscan almost six years ago, when health problems dictated he move to a place where he could receive continuous care. Today’s students never knew him. At least a dozen new faculty members never met him. Yet every single person who sets foot on Franciscan’s campus—this year, next year, or in all the years to come—has benefitted from his life and work. We are all his spiritual children. As are the countless Catholics around the world who have been blessed, in some way, by the fatherhood of Father Mike.

“I can’t look at anything that’s going on in the Church in the U.S., that hasn’t been impacted by Father Mike,” Curtis Martin MA ’93, founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, told Franciscan Magazine in 2011. “Within two degrees of separation, his thumbprint is on everything going on in the Church.”

The Renewal
And it all began in 1974. The College of Steubenville was in trouble—serious trouble. Of the four men who interviewed for the job of president, only one thought the school shouldn’t close: Father Mike.

The College, he told the trustees, could be saved. Moreover, doing that didn’t require following the path of other Catholic schools and watering down the faith. Instead, he proposed, the school needed to become more deeply Catholic and “make Jesus Christ the Lord of the campus in every respect.”

The trustees took a chance, and on October 5, 1974, Father Mike was inaugurated as the school’s fourth president.

The school didn’t die… And through it all, he prayed.

“Before leaving his room each day, he would spend two or three hours in prayer, looking for God’s inspiration about how to implement his vision,” said the late Father Angelus Migliore, TOR, who worked alongside Father Mike in those early days.

All that prayer paid off… Father Mike stayed the course, inviting prospective students, faculty, and staff who shared his love for Christ to also share his vision for Catholic higher education.

Slowly but surely, those invitations were answered. And by 1985, the College had a new name, one that reflected the spirituality at the heart of its sacramental and intellectual life: Franciscan University of Steubenville.

The school’s reputation grew as well. Bishops and pastors sought out Franciscan’s graduates to staff their chanceries and parishes, while parents dreamed of sending their children to Franciscan, where they knew they would receive an authentically Catholic education. Even the future saint, Pope John Paul II developed a love for the school. “Ahhhhhhh, Steubenville,” he would say with a smile, whenever someone from Franciscan crossed his path.

The Ramifications
Franciscan University is what it is today because of Father Mike. Franciscan University exists today because of Father Mike. But Father Mike’s influence went far beyond Franciscan.

As other schools watched Franciscan remain faithful and thrive, they followed suit.

Other apostolates and institutions (such as FOCUS, Renewal Ministries, the Franciscan Sisters of the Third Order Regular, the St. Paul Center, and the Augustine Institute) also benefitted from Father Mike’s help, encouragement, and participation.

Even youth ministry, as it’s done in most places in America today, owes a debt to Father Mike. Not only did he launch the Franciscan Youth Conferences in 1976, which set the mold for the generations of youth rallies that followed, but he also inspired others to take what Franciscan was doing on campus and replicate it elsewhere.

Then, there were the vocations. The Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr St. George, the Sisters of Life, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, the Franciscan TOR’s, and countless dioceses across the country grew their numbers of priests and religious with the help of Father Mike, who inspired so many Franciscan students to give the same yes to God that he gave.

The breadth of that influence was evident in 2009, when the Institute for Religious Life bestowed its highest honor upon Father Mike: the Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award.

The Legacy
Few men in the Church in modern times have loomed quite so large as Father Mike. But no matter how many honors poured in and no matter how far his fame spread, to two generations of alumni—those who called Franciscan home during his 40-plus years on campus—he was, again, a father: available, accessible, and always attentive. Whether you needed advice about relationship troubles or prayers for looming finals, he stood ready to deliver…

Father Mike will never again walk across campus, laughing, smiling, and talking with students. But his legacy endures. It endures in the school he saved, in all the apostolates and organizations he inspired, and most important, in the lives of those he loved so well. They are his legacy. We are his legacy.

In how we love, how we live, how we work, and how we serve—wherever that may be—we carry on the work Father Mike began, seeking to renew not just a school, but an entire world. Our faithfulness in that task is how we honor him. It’s how we give thanks to him and how we give thanks for him. It’s how we try, in our own small ways, to imitate him and all that he was: a scholar, a lawyer, a soldier, a civil rights activist and pro-life leader, an author, a speaker, a competitor, a servant, a friend, a father, a Franciscan, a priest, and, above all, a humble follower of Christ.

The Father Mike Years
Without Father Michael Scanlan, TOR, Franciscan University wouldn’t be Franciscan University. During his tenure . . .