‘Catholic Hour’ Host John Dougherty Dies

Auxiliary Bishop John J. Dougherty, a former university president and a television and radio show host, died Thursday in a hospital here. He was 78.

He suffered a stroke in 1980 and a series of other illnesses since then.

Dougherty, a native of Jersey City, began hosting “The Catholic Hour,” a radio program sponsored by the National Council of Catholic Men, in 1946 and gained a nationwide audience when it moved to television. In 1958 he narrated the television special “Eternal Rome,” the first time TV cameras were allowed to film Vatican art treasures.

He became president of Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., in 1960 and held the position nine years. From 1937 to 1959 he taught at Immaculate Conception Seminary.

Dougherty was a former chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the U.S. Catholic Conference and an early critic of the Vietnam War. He once told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the church should be involved in debate on the war.