Francis Sayre Jr., outspoken dean of National Cathedral

Gerald Martineau/Washington PostFrancis B. Sayre Jr. used his pulpit to challenge McCarthyism, racial segregation, and the Vietnam War. (Gerald Martineau/Washington Post)

WASHINGTON - Francis B. Sayre Jr., who as dean of Washington National Cathedral for 27 years oversaw much of its completion and used his pulpit to confront McCarthyism, racial tensions, and the Vietnam War, died Oct. 3 at his home on Martha's Vineyard. He was 93 and had diabetes.

The Rev. Sayre, whose grandfather was President Wilson, was appointed to the cathedral in 1951 and quickly became a leading national voice of conscience. As the church's fifth dean, he also presided over daily operations and focused on finishing the massive Gothic structure, the cornerstone of which had been placed in 1907.

Washington National Cathedral is the sixth-largest cathedral in the world and is often regarded as America's counterpart to England's Westminster Abbey as a national center for mourning and celebration. Rev. Sayre continued the cathedral's tradition of preaching the social gospel, which applies Christian ethics to matters such as war, race relations, and economic inequality.

"Whoever is appointed the dean of the cathedral," he told The Washington Post in 1977, "has in his hand a marvelous instrument and he's a coward if he doesn't use it."

From the pulpit, he denounced the tactics of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy at the Wisconsin senator's peak of influence investigating Communist influence in government and Hollywood. He called McCarthy part of a crew of "pretended patriots" and also chided the American people for letting demagogues achieve prominence.

"There is a devilish indecision about any society that will permit an impostor like McCarthy to caper out front while the main army stands idly by," he said in a 1954 sermon.

Rev. Sayre, who was trained as an Episcopalian, spoke out on the injustice of segregation in 1953, a year before the Supreme Court declared racially segregated public schools unlawful. He was later elected to President Kennedy's Committee on Equal Opportunity and was among a group of several leading Washington-area clergymen to accompany the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on his 1965 voting rights march in Selma, Ala.

Francis Bowes Sayre Jr. was born in the White House. He was the fourth grandchild of President Wilson and the firstborn of Wilson's daughter Jessie,.

His father, a Harvard University law professor, became an assistant secretary of state in the 1930s and was US high commissioner to the Philippines during the Pearl Harbor attack.

The younger Sayre had grown up around the world and graduated from Williams College in 1937 and what is now the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. He served in the Navy Chaplain Corps during World War II, and afterward oversaw a parish in Cleveland before assuming duties at the National Cathedral at age 36.

His wife, Harriet Hart Sayre, whom he married in 1946, died in 2003.

He leaves four children, Jessie Sayre Maeck of Lexington, Thomas H. Sayre of Raleigh, N.C., Harriet Sayre-McCord of Durham, N.C., and F. Nevin Sayre of Vineyard Haven; and eight grandchildren.