Everybody loved Lucey: Jesuit college leader never stopped being a pastor

MOBILE, Alabama — Fr. Gregory Lucey, S.J., who died Sept. 30 at age 88, was living embodiment of how most of life can and should transcend politics, and of how a man of faith should act.

Lucey spent two stints as president of Spring Hill College here in this Gulf Coast city and also headed the national Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, an umbrella outfit that oversees 28 such schools in the U.S. As such, he had a profound effect on many thousands of students and the institutions that served them — and also on the greater community of Mobile, where for decades he was a strong but genial presence at almost every worthwhile cultural endeavor.