Toland, Terrence (Father)

Jesuit Father Terrence Toland died on Oct. 18, 2013, at Manresa Hall in Merion Station, Pa. Fr. Toland died at Manresa Hall. He was 90 years old, a Jesuit for 74 years and a priest for 61 years.

Born In Philadelphia on November 25, 1922, Fr. Toland attended St. Joseph’s Preparatory School before entering the Society of Jesus at the Novitiate of St. Isaac Jogues in Wernersville, Pa., on August 14, 1939. He received a Master of Arts in English and a Licentiate in Philosophy in 1946 from West Baden College (Loyola University Chicago) and was ordained on June 22, 1952. After tertianship in Auriesville, N.Y., he earned a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from Woodstock College in Maryland in 1953 and a Doctor of Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1956.

During the last five decades, Fr. Toland has served as priest, theologian and educator. For eight years (1958–66), he was dean of faculty and prefect of studies at Woodstock College. He served as a member of the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Council of Priests, a member of the board of trustees of Rosemont College and St. Joseph’s Prep, vice chairman of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and on the executive committees of the National Catholic Education Association and the Pennsylvania Commission for Independent Colleges and Universities.

In addition to assignments at Carroll College in Montana, Wheeling Jesuit University, Georgetown University, the University of Scranton and Old St. Joseph’s Church, Fr. Toland served as Project Director for the Ex Corde Ecclesiae Implementation Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (1994-99). Fr. Toland is the recipient of the 2001 Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. Award for the distinguished service to higher education presented by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, an award given in recognition of his “…magnum opus of crafting many-faceted reconciliations and a new solidarity for Catholic education at the national level.”

Fr. Toland was the 23rd president of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and served there for 10 years (1966-76), eight as president. In November 2012, the former Fine Arts West building on the James J. Maguire ’58 Campus was dedicated in his honor and renamed Toland Hall. “You were a model of how a Jesuit education does make a difference,” Jesuit Father Kevin Gillespie, president of Saint Joseph’s University, told him at the ceremony.