Father Zahm and The Flying Machine

Priest. Professor. Would-be aviator. Meet the Notre Dame visionary who wanted mankind to soar.

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED MAY 20, 2025

During the years when the University of Notre Dame was teetering on an edge somewhere between a Catholic boarding school and the prestigious research university it would later become, a most curious man wandered its halls and lawns.

His feet, of course, were on the ground.

But his head was in the clouds.

On the surface, Father John Zahm might have looked like any other priest at the University of Notre Dame in the late 19th century. He wore a black cassock, taught in classrooms filled with chalk dust, and preached sermons to earnest students. But behind his scholarly demeanor burned a mind ablaze with ideas, and one idea in particular...

...that man was meant to fly.

Born in 1851 in New Lexington, Ohio, Zahm was a scientist, philosopher, and writer who joined the Congregation of Holy Cross and made Notre Dame his intellectual home. He was a devout Catholic who believed that faith and reason were not enemies, but instead were twin engines of human progress. He preached from the pulpit and wrote from the lab, advocating a vision of science that could uplift the soul as much as the mind.

By the 1890s, Zahm had become obsessed with one technological dream: the conquest of the skies. At a time when many still considered flight a fantasy - best left to birds and balloons - Zahm believed it was not only possible but inevitable.

"If God had not intended man to fly," he once said, "He would not have given him the intellect to build wings."

Zahm's experiments were more intellectual than practical. He wasn't building aircraft in a barn, like the Wright brothers would soon do. Instead, he gave lectures on aeronautics and published early American arguments for heavier-than-air flight. His 1894 book, Sound and Music, hinted at a broader interest in physics, but it was his 1905 work, Progress and the Future, that truly revealed his visionary streak. In it, he argued that human flight would become as common as travel by train, and just as transformative.

Of course, he was correct.

In lecture halls across the country, Zahm wowed audiences with vivid descriptions of what airships might one day look like. He speculated about wing shapes, propulsion mechanisms, and the cultural revolutions that would follow once humanity took to the skies. And he did it all while wearing the collar of a Catholic priest, which made him a curiosity to both the scientific establishment and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

His influence stretched beyond theory. Zahm helped foster a culture of scientific curiosity at Notre Dame, attracting thinkers and tinkerers to South Bend. One of his most fascinating connections was to the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, a flamboyant figure often credited with making the first public powered flight in Europe. Zahm brought Santos-Dumont to lecture in the states, further stirring public fascination with flight.

 

 

But Zahm may have flown too close to the sun.

He met resistance from conservative elements within the Church, particularly when he began writing favorably about Darwin and evolution. By the early 20th century, Zahm had been ordered by Rome to cease writing on controversial scientific topics, a blow that forced him to publish some of his most ambitious work under the pseudonym H. J. Mozans.

Yet his energy remained undimmed. In 1913, he convinced none other than former President Theodore Roosevelt to join him on a grand scientific expedition through South America. Zahm's plan was to visit museums, collect specimens, and promote Catholic scholarship in the New World. But once they arrived, Roosevelt was presented with a bold new idea: to chart the untraveled Rio da Dúvida, or River of Doubt.

Though Zahm had orchestrated the trip, he chose not to join the river party, citing health concerns. Roosevelt, his son Kermit, and Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon pressed forward without him and endured one of the most grueling expeditions in modern history. Zahm remained in Brazil, serving as the logistical and moral anchor for the journey. When Roosevelt returned, nearly dead from fever and injury, he gave Zahm credit as the instigator of the entire expedition.

Zahm lived a life that straddled continents, disciplines, and centuries. At Notre Dame, he's remembered as a builder of libraries and a champion of Catholic intellect. But his dream of flight - and the boldness with which he preached it - remains one of the most fascinating chapters in the university's history.

He never piloted a plane. He never built one, either. But in lecture halls and books, in ideas and inspiration, Father Zahm helped give wings to the 20th century.

Zahm died in 1921 and is buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.