| Director | Patrick Creadon |
|---|
Along with archival footage, Hesburgh consists of dozens of interviews with friends and family members as well as prominent figures such as Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Mary Frances Berry, former U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson, journalist Ted Koppel, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and university presidents Fr. Edward Malloy and Fr. John I. Jenkins.
The film begins with Hesburgh's early life, showing that he had felt called to the priesthood from the age of six. He wanted to be a military chaplain after being ordained a priest in 1943, but instead he was sent to get his doctorate and return to Notre Dame to teach and serve as a chaplain to returning World War II veterans on campus. In 1952, he was appointed president of the university at the age of 35.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him to the National Science Board in 1954, and he was the Vatican City's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. At conferences, delegates from the United States and the Soviet Union did not want to speak with each other, but they trusted Hesburgh, and he became friends with both sides and tried to bridge the divide in an effort to defuse the nuclear arms race.
Hesburgh details a number of examples of his commitment to freedom of expression. Several times he was chastised by Catholic Church leadership at the Vatican for these views; he refused Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani's demand to censor an essay by John Courtney Murray on freedom of religion, and in 1967 he led the International Federation of Catholic Universities in publishing the Land O' Lakes statement saying Catholic universities should be free from the Church's authority.