Gomes’ open door created an abundance of stories featuring Gomes helping Harvard students through tough times. But his efforts in that regard were grounded in his faith as well.

“It is not what would [Jesus] do, but what would he want from me?” said Gomes, rephrasing the bumper sticker slogan on Charlie Rose in 2007. Part of Jesus’ expectations, Gomes said, was loving others freely, something he strove to do at Harvard.

“Peter loved freely and was loved in return,” Faust said.

But by virtue of his unique character and abilities, his role as a spiritual beacon extended far beyond Harvard. As Memorial Church Associate Minister and longtime friend Dorothy A. Austin said, Gomes “brought religion into politics in ways that illumined our thought. At important moments, he stood up for things that mattered—for freedom, for liberty, and for equality.”

In the last decade of his life, Gomes spoke out against the impending war in Iraq and attracted attention when he left the Republican Party to vote for Deval L. Patrick ’78. But he took his most prominent political stance in 1991, when he came out as gay in response to homophobic remarks in a conservative Harvard magazine. His crusade against homophobia would lead him to take the spotlight on the national stage, speaking in front of the Massachusetts State House in support of same-sex marriage.

But while expressing progressive views, he never strayed from tradition and his Christianity. All of his identities—as a New Englander, an African-American, and a homosexual—he said, “are subordinate to my principal identity as a preacher and a child of Jesus Christ. I spoke, not as outraged homosexual, but as an outraged Christian.”

As a result, Gomes became a sort of de facto moral compass at Harvard, ready to weigh in on the issues of the day. At the same time, he recognized that his position at Harvard was unique.

“Harvard is my city of God. We are different from the rest of the world, and we ought to be,” he told The New Yorker in 1996.

Today, it is impossible to imagine Gomes as the church’s minister a century ago. Harvard of 1911 was nearly devoid of African Americans and would soon see the formation of a “Secret Court” that sought to expel homosexuals. But at the same, Gomes would have fit the role of minister perfectly—he was a devout Christian and a son of long-established Plymouth with a profound respect for Harvard and what it represents.

Gomes unique embodiment of the seemingly opposed value Harvard places on tradition and the importance of progress is perhaps best expressed by professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr.: “No one epitomizes all that is good about Harvard more than Peter J. Gomes.”