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Editor’s Note: The following is drawn from Fr. Leahy’s remarks at the dinner on October 11 that launched the Light the World campaign.
Boston College’s light has shined into the world and guided thousands of men and women for close to 150 years, illuminating paths in the darkness, whether from poverty to prosperity, from ignorance to wisdom, from self-doubt to courage. We have been and are today a light to struggling immigrants, to inquiring minds, to a great city, to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to our nation, and to the world.
Boston College lights the world in many ways, but it does so principally by attracting and forming men and women who are prepared to respond throughout their personal and professional lives to intellectual and moral challenges with clear-sightedness, knowledge, and integrity. We have this evening seen the faces of a few of those students—now alumni—and heard from them. The light of Boston College shines through them and thousands of our alumni into wider society, casting a great light on our city, nation, and world.
As in the time of Fr. Gasson and Frs. McElroy, Walsh, and Monan and others, so now we in our time gather to build not our own Boston College, but the Boston College for those who succeed us—who are born and not yet born; who are Americans and from countries around the world; who are Catholics and who are men and women of other religious traditions.
What lies ahead for Boston College students and alumni, we cannot know. But we do know that they will yearn for what we yearn for—peace, love, knowledge, wisdom, and faith. We are determined to build a better, stronger Boston College that will serve them and the societies in which they will live, a Boston College that will increasingly be a gift to the nations, a Boston College that will truly light the world.