Father Andrew Greeley, 85, a well-known novelist, journalist and sociologist, died May 30 at his home in Chicago’s John Hancock Center.

“Father Greeley was an often controversial priest, with deep convictions and a ready wit,” Cardinal George said in a statement. “He dedicated his life to research, writing and speaking. In his last years, the words he could still respond to were prayers, especially the Eucharist. We should keep him in our prayers now.”

Father Greeley was perhaps most widely recognized for the more than 60 novels he wrote, some considered scandalous with their portraits of hypocritical and sinful clerics. But he also wrote more than 70 works of non-fiction, often on the sociology of religion, including 2004’s “Priests: A Calling in Crisis.”

The title notwithstanding, the research he presented in that book found that priests are among the happiest men in the United States — a conclusion that mirrored his own experience.

Friends and fellow priests said that Father Greeley most wanted to be remembered as a priest, and, especially, a Chicago priest.

Father John Cusick, director of Young Adult Ministries of the Archdiocese of Chicago, was a family friend ever since he was assigned to Mary Seat of Wisdom Parish in Park Ridge after being ordained in 1970. Father Greeley’s sister and her family were parishioners there, Cusick said, and Father Greeley told him, “I’m the priest in the family, but you’re the family priest.”

It was intimidating at first. “He was larger than life,” Cusick said. “You’re talking about somebody who had a tremendous effect on the American Catholic Church. He was a religious sociologist, he researched Catholic education. He researched Catholicism in America in way that nobody else did with so much intensity.”

While not everyone liked what he said when he said it, Cusick said, most eventually acknowledged that Father Greeley’s conclusions were accurate.

“If anybody stopped and saw what Andy said in 1970, by 1980 the naysayers were saying the same things,” Cusick said.

Born in Oak Park, Father Greeley attended St. Angela School on the West Side, was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1954 and served as assistant pastor of Christ the King Parish from 1954 and 1963, while pursuing post-graduate studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. He later lived at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Hyde Park, and, for 17 years starting in 1969, St. Ambrose Parish, 1012 E. 47th St.

In later years, he taught sociology both at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona.

He maintained a relationship with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago from 1982 until he stopped working following a 2008 accident in which his coat caught on the door of a taxicab in Rosemont, leading to a fall that caused a traumatic brain injury. While he returned home after a long hospitalization and rehabilitation, and enjoyed visitors, he no longer appeared in public.

His final book, “Chicago Catholics and the Struggles Within Their Church,” was published in 2010.

He was released from diocesan duties to pursue his academic interests in 1965, and he remained a priest in good standing. He published his first novel, “The Magic Cup,” in 1975, although his most popular books may have been “The Cardinal Sins” (1981) and “Thy Brother’s Wife” (1982). In later years, many speculated that his priest/bishop detective Blackie Ryan was a stand-in for Father Greeley himself. Father Greeley denied that, but acknowledged that the “little bishop” was his “spokesman.”

In the same interview, Father Greeley spoke of the importance of story to religious imagination, saying he tried with his novels to do what the stained-glass artists of renaissance Europe did with their windows: to spark the imagination and lead it to faith.

In an October 2000 workshop he presented during the annual Chicago Catechetical Conference, Father Greeley said that the Catholic Church in the United States needs to open its doors to beauty — especially the beauty of Catholic tradition.

“The beauty of the Catholic heritage, flawed as it is, attracts, enchants and will not let people go, no matter how hard they try to escape it,” he said. “Teachers and catechists should expose their students to the beauty in the church and in the world because beauty illumines God’s grace and beauty transforms people, providing real moments of conversion.”

Father Greeley spoke about the church, Catholics and women in his presentations in the archdiocese.

Opening a lecture series at Loyola University in 2003, Father Greeley said, “Catholics remain Catholic not because of anything the bishops do, but simply because they like being Catholic — despite the best efforts of some ‘intellectuals’ to destroy ‘the sense of story and mystery’ that has always made the church the church.”

In 1986, Father Greeley established a $1 million Catholic Inner- City School Fund, providing scholarships and financial support to schools in the Chicago archdiocese who have more than 50 percent minority student populations. In 1984, he contributed a $1 million endowment to establish a chair in Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago. He also funded an annual lecture series, “The Church in Society,” at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, where he received his licentiate in sacred theology in 1954.

In February 2003, Father Greeley gifted Catholic schools in the archdiocese with $420,000 to bolster the newly established Catholic Schools Endowment Fund, created by the Office for Catholic Schools to provide scholarship money for students whose families could not afford tuition.

He was the recipient of the 2006 Campion award given at America House in New York City. The Award was named after St. Edmund Campion, a Jesuit who was put to death in London in 1581 for refusing to deny his faith or his priesthood, and pays tribute to those same qualities in modern authors. America magazine was one of several publications to which Father Greeley contributed.

Father Greeley also wrote a column for the Chicago Sun-Times and was a contributor to other newspapers and magazines.

Cardinal George was to celebrate a funeral Mass for Father Greeley June 5 at Christ the King Church, Cusick was to preach the homily.

Father Greeley is survived by his sister, Mary Jule Durkin, and nieces and nephews, Laura Durkin, Julie Montegue, Eileen Durkin, John Durkin, Daniel Durkin, Anne Durkin and Elizabeth Durkin.