Former Congressman Fr. Robert Drinan has passed

As Monday headlines centered on the death of a horse that won the Kentucky Derby, the passing of a man who introduced the first House impeachment resolution against President Richard Nixon went virtually unnoticed.

The Rev. Robert Drinan, 86, a Jesuit priest, spent virtually his entire adult life teaching law at Boston College and Georgetown University, and making law for 10 years as a congressman from Massachusetts.

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Drinan introduced a 1973 resolution to impeach Nixon based on the secret (and illegal) bombing of Cambodia. The panel ultimately picked broader grounds, chiefly abuse of power, to vote overwhelmingly in the summer of 1974 to impeach the 37th president.

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Before going to Congress, Fr. Drinan conducted investigations for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on conditions for African-Americans in inner-city Boston. The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, chaired the commission at the time.