Donald R. Schultz, former Villanova theology professor

Over the last dozen years, Donald R. Schultz would take donations, often at Christmas, to the Tzotzil Indians in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

"This last Christmas, I had to beg and plead with him not to go" because cancer had weakened him, his son, Erik, said in an interview. He didn't go.

The former Jesuit seminarian and Villanova University theology teacher had a special concern for the Indians of Chiapas, 45 of whom had been massacred Dec. 22, 1997, by paramilitary forces.

"When he saw people in need," his son said, "his heart went out to them."

Dr. Schultz, 84, died Wednesday, Feb. 15, of cancer at Kachina Point, a health-care center in Sedona, Ariz. He had lived in Cornville, Ariz., since 1992.

He retired in 1991 as a professor of religious studies from what is now the department of theology and religious studies at Villanova, after teaching there since 1969, a department spokesman said.

"When he was at Villanova," his son said, "he used to take groups of volunteer students from Villanova and other colleges to . . . work in impoverished areas of Mexico, often around Mexico City.

"They'd paint churches, dig irrigation, repair houses [for] two to three weeks."

But after the 1997 massacre, Erik said, "my dad found a priest down there, and he would take money to him to give to the Tzotzil Indians" donated by friends and Jesuits in California.

"He used to make multiple trips to Mexico every year."

Born in Tacoma, Wash., Dr. Schultz graduated from Bellarmine Preparatory School there in 1945 and completed his military obligation working as a Navy radioman.

While studying to become a Jesuit priest, he taught at high schools in Oregon and Washington state, earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts at Gonzaga University in Spokane in 1954, and received a master's degree in theology in 1962 at Alma College in Los Gatos, Calif.

After leaving the Jesuits in 1963, before ordination, he married in 1964, began his Villanova career in 1969, and earned a doctorate in religious studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1972.

From the early 1970s, his son said, Dr. Schultz was a member of a prayer group at Daylesford Abbey in Paoli.

Besides his son, Mr. Schultz is survived by his wife, Juanita; a daughter, Marta Schultz; a sister; and three grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass was held Wednesday, Feb. 22, in Arizona. He was buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix.