By The Editors

The Reverend Peter J. Gomes, a black churchman who forged a distinctive career in the historic position of chief minister to Harvard University, died Monday evening at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 68, and according to The Harvard Crimson, the university’s undergraduate newspaper, had suffered a brain aneurysm and a heart attack.

Rev. Gomes had been hospitalized in December after suffering a stroke.

Born in Boston and raised in nearby Plymouth, Massachusetts, the site of the Mayflower landing, Peter Gomes combined multiple heritages — his mother was a Boston-born black American; his father a Cape Verdean immigrant, working-class and upper-class sensibilities, and the religious traditions of Black Baptist, Roman Catholicism, and High-Church Episcopalianism – with a keen intellect, rapier-like wit, and the ability to speak of the relevance of religion to everyday life without being “preachy” or pedantic. He was the author of several books, including The Good Life: Truths That Last in Times of Need and The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart.”