Scholarship aims to increase diversity at Marian College

By John Shaughnessy

His simple approach to life could help many people today: “Pray and work, but don’t worry.”

Yet, it’s the actions of Cardinal Joseph E. Ritter that provide the greatest lesson about the difference that one person of vision and courage can make in the world.

Sitting in his president’s office at Marian College in Indianapolis, Daniel Elsener shares the defining story of Cardinal Ritter, the late archbishop of Indianapolis whose legacy has been honored at the college with a new $1 million endowed scholarship fund.

The story takes Elsener back to 1947, 10 years after Cardinal Ritter ordered the integration of Catholic schools in Indianapolis. By 1947, Cardinal Ritter had become the archbishop of St. Louis, a community with steep Southern ties that felt comfortable with blacks and whites attending separate schools.

Cardinal Ritter didn’t share that belief. So he ordered Catholic schools in St. Louis to be integrated—a choice that led to a hostile and vocal firestorm, with opponents threatening legal action while also suggesting that the Indiana native return to his home state or take his plan with him to Africa.

“Even good people told him he couldn’t do it,” Elsener said, shaking his head in respect and admiration. “He was under tremendous pressure. And he just did it. And he was alone in doing it. He saw things as they should be. Some people have courage. Some people have vision. The great leaders have both.”

Cardinal Ritter’s choice came seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

“What he stood for actually affected our country,” Elsener said. “He was a step ahead, and he didn’t have a National Guard to implement it. We need to remember it and celebrate it.”

The scholarship fund will be used to increase diversity at Marian, according to the wishes of the person who endowed it—Andrew Steffen, an Indianapolis attorney.

“A big part of my interest is to provide opportunities to qualified and deserving students who want to obtain degrees in the performing and visual arts and in education, but who are economically disadvantaged and need financial assistance to realize their goals,” Steffen said in a press release from Marian College.

Steffen also wanted to honor Cardinal Ritter’s life.

“In my conversations with him, I hear a man who has tremendous respect for Cardinal Ritter and what he stood for,” Elsener said. “He wants to keep his memory alive and what he stood for alive. It’s something he felt called to do.

“On a real practical level, one of our absolute focuses is to make sure that higher education doesn’t become an enterprise where the privileged become more privileged. When people take what God has so blessed them with and invest it in others so another generation can have a Catholic college education, I just can’t think of a greater act of stewardship.”

Elsener hopes that legacy of making a difference continues with the students who will benefit from the Cardinal Ritter scholarship fund.

“I hope the people who receive them can live out a little of Cardinal Ritter’s vision, courage and commitment to education. I hope the Christian message flows through their life’s work. The beauty of that kind of gift is that it just lives and lives.” †