BUFFALO, N.Y. — A new era at Canisius College began on Friday, July 1, 2022, when a new president assumed the office that was held for the past 12 years by John Hurley.
Hurley took the reigns of his alma mater as its first lay president and lead the college through arguably, one of its most challenging eras.
Earlier that week, WGRZ’s Maryalice Demler joined him for a campus tour and a candid conversation about his tenure.
"When I became President, to see Fr. McGinley… and Fr. Demske… and then we hung Fr. Cooke's picture... You say, ‘there are some giants there!’" exclaimed John Hurley.
Standing in the hall of former Canisius presidents, John Hurley takes a moment to reflect on the work of his predecessors.
"It was really a whole lot less complicated then. Today it’s so... the legal and the compliance and the emotional things…” he recalled.
In 2010, Hurley was installed as the 24th president of the private, Catholic Jesuit college and the first non-priest in that post. There were immediate challenges. The number of high school graduates was in decline. There was increasing competition for students from other nearby private Catholic colleges like D'Youville and Daemen. Plus, the state's Excelsior Scholarship was offering free tuition. It all meant fewer students landed at Canisius and that forced the college to cut a number of programs and faculty.
"We were in a place that no one wanted to be and it required some hard decisions. I didn't think, and I remained convinced, it didn't mean sitting and hoping that tomorrow would be better. We had to make tomorrow better," Hurley said.
To secure Canisius' fiscal future, Hurley dug into fundraising, more than doubling the college's endowment from $74 million to $170 million.
Another project Hurley's most proud of is the renovation and repurposing of the former St. Vincent's Church on Main Street, adjacent to the campus. It’s an impressive event space used for lectures, concerts, and campus events.
"It's great to be part of something that preserves the neighborhood. When I came here in '97, the relationship with the neighborhood was not that great. And I think today we enjoy a great working relationship with the neighbors” he said.
Our walk through The Quad leads to the spiritual center of campus life... Christ the King Chapel. And for Hurley, it's the heart of his drive and motivation.
"You see you have the great Jesuit saints along here... Ignatius, Xavier, Canisius, Bellarmine..." Hurley said.
"How has your faith formation helped you succeed as a president?” Demler asks.
“It meant everything. It really did," says Hurley.
"One of the things I realized, in the midst of any sort of challenging situation, is that God isn't here to solve our problems. God is walking with us while we solve our problems,” he said.
And one of the more challenging problems Hurley took on was the priest sex abuse scandal in the Buffalo Catholic Diocese. He assembled a group of influential Catholic lay leaders to form the "Movement to Restore Trust", as a way to engage and encourage faithful Catholics to play a role in the reorganization of the church, all while the details of the abuse scandal here were still unfolding.
"What are your feelings about it now? Was it well worth the effort and maybe distraction that it was to Canisius?" asked Demler.
"We garnered a great deal of national respect for what we did here in Buffalo, and Canisius College in particular, being the situs of it. I think people came to see that this was a very, very important thing" Hurley responded.
"Was it a surprise to you to find out the depth and the breadth of the problem here-- the level of the abuse here?" Demler asked.
"It was a surprise, because we said this at the time, we had always been assured that Buffalo was somehow different than other places," Hurley recalled.
“Did you feel misled by Bishop Malone?" Demler asked.
“Eventually, the Movement to Restore Trust… you did revoke your support from the bishop. Do you have mixed feelings about that? Do you feel that was still the right thing to do?” she asked.
"To be in a position where we were saying, we essentially did not have confidence in his ability any longer, was very difficult. On the other hand, I think we all thought that the diocese was in a kind of freefall at that point. And we weren't sure what the end game looked like. So, something had to happen," Hurley explained.
Having led his alma mater through more than a fair share of challenges and opportunities, Hurley's tenure ends at the stroke of midnight, leaving him, he says, with a heightened awareness about life and purpose.
"We're supposed to pray as though everything depends on God but then work as though everything depends on us. And that's the way I've approached things," he said.
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