Members of the search committee interviewed and discussed candidates before University President Neil L. Rudenstine made the final selection.

And in a statement released on Wednesday, Rudenstine praised Hehir for his leadership skills.

"Father Hehir is a man of exceptional intellect and incisiveness, and he possesses rare human and spiritual qualities that make him ideally suited for this important position," he said. "His combination of qualities--humanity, leadership, intelligence, judgement, commitment and administrative ability--is quite simply superb."

Indeed, the only person who seemed surprised by the decision was Hehir, who said yesterday that he had never expected to become the school's permanent head.

"It wasn't a position I had thought about at all," he said. "I understood that I took the position for six months, until they got a new dean."

Hehir played a crucial role in drafting the 1983 Catholic Bishop's Statement on Nuclear Weapons, which advocated eventual nuclear disarmament, and was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for his work on the document.

He received his Th.D. in Applied Theology from the Divinity School, and served as Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics until 1992.