Non-Priest Picked to Head Georgetown University

Georgetown University broke with tradition Thursday to select a president who is not a Jesuit priest, a first for the nation’s oldest Roman Catholic university.

Officials will announce today that Senior Vice President John J. DeGioia, an alumnus who has spent his entire career at Georgetown, will succeed Leo J. O’Donovan, a Jesuit priest, when he retires in June after 12 years as president.

“I’m very excited to lead this university,” DeGioia said in a telephone interview Thursday night. “It’s been my home for a quarter-century.”

DeGioia, 44, will be the first layperson to ascend to the top of any of the nation’s 28 Jesuit colleges or universities, a milestone long dreaded by some conservative Catholics who have pushed the school to stay closer to its religious roots.

Others, though, touted the choice of a longtime insider and practicing Catholic who they say will uphold the university’s Jesuit traditions.

“I think he embodies what Georgetown’s about,” said the Rev. Brian O. McDermott, rector of the school’s Jesuit community. “It’s a plus he’s coming from within the heart of the university.”

From the start of their search last year, board members said they would consider candidates from outside the Jesuit priesthood, citing the shrinking number of priests in Catholic higher education.

Sources involved in the search said that at least one Jesuit was among the final four candidates considered by the university’s board of directors this week. But officials also had been forced to extend their search beyond the original deadline of December because they could not find enough Jesuit candidates of prominent stature to show the board, according to other sources close to the search process.

As senior vice president, DeGioia has served as the No. 2 person at the university, chief advisor to the president and coordinator of strategic planning. Previously, DeGioia was vice president and chief administrative officer of Georgetown’s Main Campus, including all undergraduate and graduate programs.