He served as Notre Dame’s president for 18 years.

Still teaching at Notre Dame, President Emeritus Father Edward “Monk” Malloy guides students in spirituality and ethics.

And now the priest, who has given his life offering sacrifice and prayer, is giving part of himself in hopes of saving his nephew’s life and others.

I sat down this week for a conversation with Father Malloy, who is donating one of his kidneys on Monday.

Long before he was ordained a priest at Notre Dame and became the university’s 16th president, Monk -- as he is affectionately called by his students and faculty -- was part of a devout Catholic family, spending his childhood in Washington.

This future priest, who took his first jump-shot at the age of one, excelled in school and athletics, going on to play basketball at Notre Dame, occasionally nursing a sprained ankle or jammed fingers.

“It’s funny, I’ve only been one night in a hospital my whole life, and that’s when I had my tonsils out when I was a boy. But how lucky can you be?” he remembers.

Lucky and healthy enough to donate a kidney he hopes will save his 40-year-old nephew Johnny, who has been on dialysis for a year and a half.

Sisters, aunts, and much younger nieces were tested but weren’t a match, and Fr. Malloy didn’t think he would be a candidate.

“I thought at first I was too old. I’m 67, and I thought, ‘who wants a 67-year-old?” he explains.

It turned out 70 is the cutoff age for donation. So Fr. Malloy spent a few days at Johns Hopkins undergoing tests, and surgery was set for August 11th.

But then something changed.

“About three weeks ago I get a call. My secretary says, ‘one of the doctors from Johns Hopkins is calling,’ and I thought maybe there was some complication. He said, ‘Would you be willing to entertain a swap?’ I said, ‘a swap?’”

Turns out there was a woman about Monk’s age in need of a kidney, and Monk was a match. Her son, in his thirties, offered his kidney to Johnny.

“At first I was a bit taken aback and so was my nephew. I mean, there is something special about giving a kidney to your own relative,” says Fr. Malloy.

But this priest, who taught biomedical ethics at Notre Dame in the 1970s, when transplantation was quite new, had a challenge of his own.

“Now I went from being a theoretician about it to a practitioner.”

Monk and Johnny decided the swap could give the gift of life to two families, and attention to the fact that 80,000 Americans are currently in need of kidney transplants.

“In the end we said, ‘sure.’ I mean, this is the right thing to do,” Fr. Malloy says. “I believe that the results will be positive for everybody concerned -- all four people, as it turns out.”

I continue my Conversation with Father Malloy tonight at 11:00. He talks more about the need for kidney donation and why he thinks it is the closest a man can get to childbirth.

And if you pray, you might want to remember Father Malloy and the others in your prayers. And we will certainly let you know the outcome of the surgery.

A Conversation with Father Malloy - Part 2: The need for kidney donors
Fr. "Monk" Malloy leaves hospital, feels "amazingly well"