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WILKES-BARRE &mdash; The Rev. Thomas Looney will continue a frequent tradition at King&rsquo;s College when he becomes president later this year: Appointing leaders from within. He will also, purely by coincidence, echo another incoming president&rsquo;s past: Having applied for the job previously and getting it some eight years later. Looney was a finalist in 2011 for the job he just got.
				&ldquo;The difference is in our lives we don&rsquo;t compete for these things,&rdquo; Looney said in a phone interview Saturday, the morning after the King&rsquo;s Board of Directors announced he will be the college&rsquo;s 10th president.
				The man Looney replaces, The Rev. John Ryan, also rose from the ranks within King&rsquo;s, as did his predecessor, The Rev. Tom O&rsquo;Hara, and the president before that, The Rev. James Lackenmier. Looney worked with all three.
				Bylaws require the president come from the ranks of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, the religious group that founded King&rsquo;s (and the University of Notre Dame), Looney noted. Their are advantages to having a president who has worked at the college, he added.
				&ldquo;King&rsquo;s is built on the philosophy of Catholic education that is embodied in the Congregation, so having someone from the Congregation helps assure that great philosophical tradition takes place,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The spirit of King&rsquo;s is in the relationships of faculty to students, that is caring, and helping them discover their deepest longings and gifts.&rdquo;
				Rising from the ranks within the college helps keep that relationship primary.
				He recounted a recent moment that drove those relationships home. &ldquo;I was privileged to preside over the wedding of two young King&rsquo;s alumni, and it was wonderful to see these two people who were such loving and caring people, and know that the mission of King&rsquo;s helped bring them together.&rdquo;
				Born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, Looney said he started his education in a Catholic elementary school and felt the calling to the priesthood &ldquo;ever since I was in third grade.&rdquo; He also became a University of Notre Dame football fan by default. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re born Irish Catholic in Brooklyn it comes with the territory.&rdquo;
				At age 11, his family moved to upstate New York, but the call to priesthood and the fandom of the Fighting Irish traveled with him. When it came time to answer the calling, he opted for the Congregation of the Holy Cross because &ldquo;my mother&rsquo;s uncle was a Holy Cross brother. He served as postmaster at Notre Dame.&rdquo;
				And choosing the Congregation, he suspects, led him to a career in academe.
				&ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of a mystery,&rdquo; Looney said, &ldquo;As a kid I thought of being a parish priest, working in a parish church. One of the blessings of being in a community (like the Congregation) is that people invite you to do something you wouldn&rsquo;t think of doing yourself. They say &lsquo;this is something you can do and should do.&rsquo; They invite you to do somethings that make you stretch.&rdquo;
				Stretch he did, coming to King&rsquo;s to take his profession of vows in the former Chapel of Christ the King in 1986, teaching theology and serving as deacon at St. Nicholas Parish in Wilkes-Barre. His latest positions have been as college chaplain and associate vice president of academic success.
				It is as chaplain that he feels he made one of his most valuable contributions to the college so far, helping oversee the transformation of the former Memorial Presbyterian Church into the school&rsquo;s new chapel.
				Along with assuring meticulous preservation of many original facets of the venerable church, he helped oversee the installation of two &ldquo;icons&rdquo; &mdash; large portrayals Congregation of the Holy Cross founder Blessed Basil Moreau and Congregation Patron Our Lady of Sorrows (Mary, the Mother of Jesus) &mdash; done in the style of Greek Orthodox churches. He also invited former church members to a special service marking the transition, allowing many to see the inside of the church for the first time in years.
				&ldquo;I was so blessed to be involved in the renovation of the Memorial Presbyterian Church and to bring together so many different aspects of traditions &mdash; the original furniture, the Catholic images and the Easter Orthodox images &mdash; that richness of three major branches of Christianity into one Church. &ldquo;
				That pride is reflected in his new official portrait, taken in the church with a background of three distinctive stained-glass windows installed long ago to commemorate three children who died of Scarlet Fever.
				Looney has no plans beyond serving as King&rsquo;s president. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen anything in life as a stepping stone,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m thrilled by this opportunity, I&rsquo;m humbled by it. I love King&rsquo;s and it&rsquo;s mission.
				&ldquo;I will serve as long as the board of directors deems me suitable.&rdquo;
				As to concerns about people referring to him as &ldquo;President Looney,&rdquo; or to his tenure as &ldquo;King&rsquo;s Looney years,&rdquo; The 60-year-old laughs and shrugs them off. He&rsquo;s dealt with such plays off his name for six decades.
				&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve gotten so use to the irony of my own name that it doesn&rsquo;t bother me.&rdquo;
				Well, maybe there is one proscription prompted by it.
				&ldquo;I joke that we&rsquo;re not going to build a school of psychiatry&rdquo; named after him.

A talk with the new soon-to-be president of King’s College