Former Le Moyne president with melanoma asks to be included in prayers.
Rev. Charles Beirne, former president of Le Moyne College, stands in front of Grewen Hall at the college in 2007.The Rev. Charles J. Beirne, the man who guided Le Moyne College into the 21st Century as its president, is receiving hospice care at a Jesuit infirmary in the Bronx.
Beirne said he decided to forgo chemotherapy when he was confronted with a recurrence of melanoma, a form of skin cancer that he has battled on and off since 1993, enduring at least 17 surgeries.
“I’m dealing with it day by day,” Beirne said in a telephone interview from the infirmary at Murray Weigel Hall. He asked friends in Syracuse to remember him in their prayers and to remember Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, whose care he praised.
“They are the best,” he said.
Beirne, 71, was Le Moyne’s president from 1999 to 2007, when he left to serve as a consultant for Jesuits in Africa seeking to establish the continent’s first Jesuit university. He became a visiting professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education in 2008.
Fordham is where Beirne received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history. He received a master’s degree in theology from Woodstock College. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1969 and embarked on a career as an academic administrator. He received a doctorate in education in 1973 from the University of Chicago.
A turning point in his life came in 1989, when members of the military in El Salvador murdered six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Universidad Centroamericana, Beirne told The Post-Standard three years ago.
Beirne, who had worked summers with Jesuits in El Salvador through the 1980s, volunteered to go the university and was appointed its vice president of academic affairs, holding the post from 1990 to 1993. There he became an adviser to the United States government, whose Central America policy he long believed to have been misguided.
He later became academic vice president at the Universidad Rafael Landivar in Guatemala, serving there until his appointment as Le Moyne’s 11th president, succeeding the Rev. Robert Mitchell.
During his tenure, Le Moyne developed a 20-year campus architecture plan, adopted a new mission statement and launched a $50 million capital campaign. He also became immersed in community affairs, serving on the boards of Syracuse 20/20, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, the former Metropolitan Development Association and the former Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce.
Among the local honors he received were the Bishop’s Medallion, bestowed by Bishop James Moynihan in 2006, and an honorary degree from Le Moyne in 2009, both recognizing his dedication to social justice.
Well-wishers can address cards to the Rev. Charles J. Beirne, Murray Weigel Hall, 515 E. Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458.