Column
Hurley continues to work for equality for
black South Africans
By ROBERT F. DRINAN
Denis Hurley, retired archbishop of
Durban, South Africa, spoke briefly and eloquently at a reception in his honor
at the South African Embassy in Washington recently. Everyone knew that this
Irish-born Oblate fought for decades against apartheid and finally won.
The archbishop, who will be 84 Nov. 10, seems to be at peace. His
courage and his help in making apartheid disappear is legendary in South Africa
and known throughout the world. The archbishop is now raising funds for
scholarship assistance for the desperately poor among the 18,000 poor students
at the University of Natal, where Hurley was chancellor for several years after
he retired as archbishop, a position he held for some 40 years.
The more one explores the life of Denis Hurley, the more amazing
it is.
In 1947 Hurley was ordained a bishop at age 31, the youngest
Catholic bishop in the world at the time. In 1951 he became the first elected
president of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference. In 1957 the
conference declared apartheid to be intrinsically evil. This was
decades before the other Christian churches in South Africa declared
segregation unacceptable.
The position of the Catholic bishops startled and to some extent
alienated the white leadership of South Africa. To this day the church can
claim only 3 million Catholics, 80 percent of whom are black. But around the
world the heroic stance of Hurley and the entire hierarchy of South Africa won
applause.
It is of course true that the Catholic churchs stance in
South Africa was ambiguous. Segregated churches and all-too-frequent silence in
the face of injustice mars its record. But its still true that the
Catholic bishops of the country, and Hurley in particular, were out front in
ways that demanded vision and courage.
For decades Hurley spoke out. He condemned the migratory labor
laws that separated families. He excoriated forced removals that were used by
the government to uproot hundreds of thousands of black people from their
traditional homelands. The archbishop defended those who were conscientiously
opposed to serving in the military that was based on apartheid.
Hurley suffered personally. His home was firebombed. He was
threatened with banning, tantamount to house arrest. Criminal charges against
him were eventually dropped.
But those dark decades have disappeared. The archbishop was a
special guest at the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela. In 1997 all of
the bishops of southern Africa came to Durban to celebrate Hurleys life
and to pay tribute to his courage, which for 40 years he transmitted to
believers of all kinds. Hurleys collected writings and speeches, titled
Facing the Crisis, recently appeared and are getting admiring notices.
Hurley remembers with gratitude that during dark days American
universities such as Notre Dame, Georgetown, The Catholic University of
America, DePaul and Santa Clara reached out to him with honorary degrees. Now
he is appealing to his American friends and admirers to help the thousands of
very poor young people in South Africa to get to college. These are the
students who until 1991 were deprived of basic education by the apartheid
government. They are the children of black Africans who for some 200 years were
deprived of basic literary skills.
They are the future leaders who want to attend the University of
Natal, an institution established in 1910 for white students but which today is
80 percent black.
Chatting with Hurley at the South African Embassy on Trinity
Sunday was a unique experience. I had met him twice during the awful years of
apartheid. No one could have predicted that there would be such a glorious
second spring for Hurley or for the 38 million black people in South Africa. An
entire country was transformed.
From the day of his ordination to the priesthood in 1939 to the
day he resigned as Durbans archbishop, Denis E. Hurley worked to give
equality to the black people in South Africa.
He wants to continue that work in the Denis E. Hurley Education
Fund. All contributions are tax exempt. They can be sent to the Denis E. Hurley
Educational Fund, Suite 1200, 11300 Rockville Pike, Rockville MD 20852.
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center.
National Catholic Reporter, July 2,
1999
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