LEWISTON — The Rev. Richard Clifford had only been back home in Lewiston but a few minutes when the adoration began.

There was his family, eager to take Clifford out to dinner and to get caught up. There was the press, asking him to pose for pictures and hitting him with question after question about his long career.

At 80, Clifford accepts it all with good cheer.

“I’m always glad to be home,” he said. “The reason I’m always welcome is that I only stay for two days. That’s why I’m so popular around here.”

He jokes, of course. When Clifford makes his regular visits, it’s considered an honor for one of his brothers to put him up. Last time it was Dave. This weekend, Clifford will stay at the home of his brother Robert, the famed local judge, and the whole family will gather throughout the weekend.

“We love having him,” said Carmen Clifford, Dave’s wife. “We’re so proud of all that he’s done.”

Carmen isn’t alone in that. A few weeks ago, 200-plus friends, family and colleagues gathered at Boston College to pay tribute to the man: teacher, Jesuit, administrator and founding dean of Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. The faculty was there, of course, and the students, but so were Clifford’s four brothers and their wives and a number of nephews and nieces from around New England.

“It was all for me,” Clifford said Friday. “It was an amazing thing. The whole thing was more fun than serious, really, but it was nice. We made it kind of a celebration of the school.”

Clifford was the founding dean of the school between 2008-10, but he’s been teaching for nearly five decades, providing theological education for candidates for the priesthood and others who wish to serve the church. Clifford is estimated to have taught over 4,000 students during his years in the classroom.

In a recent interview with a Boston College publication, Clifford spoke of the changes in the student body since he began teaching. Where it was once made up exclusively of religious students, roughly 70 percent of students these days are lay men and women. Some students are from other countries, which adds diversity that Clifford believes is helpful to students and teachers.

“You hear different points of view all the time and that’s a big help,” Clifford said. “They see things differently and you can learn by the way they look at life. It’s a very positive environment.”

He’s also a fan of the mingling between young and old, which provides both groups a chance to view the world in different ways.

“I live with younger students who are studying to be priests and I love it,” he said. “I think young people should live with old people and old people should live with young people. Young people on their own, they don’t get enough wisdom afforded to them, and then older people, they’re going talk about their prostates. I think each can help the other.”

The 2½ years he spent as founding dean was a time when much of Clifford’s work was administrative, which typically means a better salary and more control over the direction of the school. On the matter of administration versus teaching, he’s not ambiguous.

“I will administer if need be,” he said. “You do what you have to do, but you lose contact with the students. I prefer to teach. I think many or most administrators would prefer to teach.”

And teach he will. In the next academic year, Clifford will transition to professor emeritus of Old Testament. “I’m not retiring,” Clifford repeated on Friday. “I’m continuing to teach in fewer classes.”

The St. Dominic High School graduate noted a few things that were different about his old hometown since he left the area.

“When I left, there were still mills here,” Clifford said. “There were still a fair number of people employed there, which was nice because there was room for unskilled labor.”

A lot of the churches are gone now, too, in particular St. Joseph’s, which Clifford remembers fondly.

“I feel sorry for St. Joseph’s because it goes back to the 1860s,” Clifford said. “My grandparents, my parents and my brothers all went there. We were all baptized there and some were married there. It was sad to see it turned into a parking lot.”

He still finds Lewiston “friendly and unpretentious” when he visits. Clifford and his family will gather Saturday night to go out for dinner as they always do. On Sunday morning, he’ll go to Mass at Holy Family Church.

A graduate of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., Clifford earned a doctorate in biblical studies from Harvard University. He was general editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly and is a former president of the Catholic Biblical Association.

At the tribute last month, Boston College President William P. Leahy referred to Clifford as “a living example … of someone committed to faith and scholarship in service of the church and wider society. Given the 400-year history of the Jesuit education, what more or better could be said of a Jesuit teacher and scholar?”

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