Monsignor Alfred F. Horrigan was born in 1914. He is notable for being the founding president of Bellarmine University

Bellarmine University

Bellarmine University is an independent, private, Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky. The liberal arts institution opened on October 3, 1950, as Bellarmine College, established by Archbishop John A. Floersh of the Archdiocese of Louisville and named after the Cardinal Saint Robert...

. Ordained in 1940, he was named a monsignor

Monsignor

Monsignor, pl. monsignori, is the form of address for those members of the clergy of the Catholic Church holding certain ecclesiastical honorific titles. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian monsignore, from the French mon seigneur, meaning "my lord"...

 by Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII

The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....

. Msgr. Horrigan was frequently involved in social justice

Social justice

Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...

 issues and headed the Louisville

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

 Human Relation Commission. He was a friend of Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was a 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion...

. The preschool at St. James Elementary School is named after him. He also served at St. James Church as a priest. He was the first recipient of Saint Meinrad’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, which was conferred upon him in 1990. He was inducted into the Kentucky Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2003. He died in August 2005 at the age of ninety.

External links

• http://www.saintmeinrad.edu/alumni_obit_details.aspx?ObituaryID=180
• http://www.stjamesbluejays.com/churchnews.html