Perspective Honoring a giant of the anti-apartheid
fight
By THOMAS C. FOX
Georgetown President John J.
Jack DeGioia and his wife, Theresa, last month honored retired
Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durbin, South Africa, at a dinner. DeGioia succeeded
Jesuit Fr. Leo J. ODonovan as Georgetowns 48th president and its
first lay president July 1.
The dinner was held under a summer-perfect sky in front of the
campus Dahlgren chapel. Two-dozen faculty members and friends showed, all
having been supporters of South Africas anti-apartheid struggles in the
1970s and 80s.
The DeGioias gesture to honor a Catholic human rights legend
at their first public dinner did not go unrecognized by the guests.
A grateful Hurley, trim and healthy at 85, responded, saying the
warm support he had been shown in Washington made it easier for him to return
to South Africa, a country he described as ravaged by poverty and
AIDS.
Hurley came to Washington last month in an effort to raise funds
for scholarship assistance for the desperately poor seeking to attend the
University of Natal where he was chancellor for several years after he retired
as archbishop. He spoke at the dinner of his fondness for the United States and
the American people. He has received six honorary degrees from American
Catholic colleges and universities, including one from Georgetown in 1987.
I leave here with a renewed faith as I return to my
country, he said.
Born to Irish Catholic parents, Hurley said he spent five years as
a child on Robben Island where his father tended a lighthouse. The island has
been notorious in South African history as a prison that housed among its
inmates anti-apartheid activists. The most famous of these was Nelson Mandela,
who was held there from 1964 to 1988.
I joke with President Mandela, Hurley said, that
we both had Robben Island experiences, though mine were certainly more
pleasant.
Ordained an Oblate priest at age 24, Hurley was appointed a bishop
in 1947 at age 31. At the time he was the youngest Catholic bishop in the
world. The Oblates have long worked with the poor in South Africa and have
struggled in human rights causes for decades. Some 400 Oblate priests are
active there today.
Interviewed in 1997, shortly before the 50th anniversary of his
ordination as a bishop, Hurley said it was in 1947 that he first gave serious
thought to the unjust conditions in South Africa. It was also then that he
began to call for the church to oppose apartheid.
Hurley became the first elected president of the South African
Bishops Conference in 1951. He served as its leader until 1961, and again
between 1981 and 1987. Through his influence, the conference became
increasingly outspoken and active against apartheid and other forms of
injustice.
The South African bishops issued their first official statement on
race relations in 1952, and in 1957 declared apartheid intrinsically
evil.
Over the years Hurley 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. He defended those who were conscientiously opposed to
serving in a military that was based on apartheid.
Hurley also suffered personally. His home was firebombed. He was
threatened with banning, an act tantamount to house arrest. In the early 1980s,
charges were brought against him and he was threatened with a trial and
imprisonment.
In response, former member of the U.S. Congress and Georgetown
University law professor Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan brought up the charges with
the ambassador from South Africa, saying all hell would break loose
if Hurley went to trial. The charges were soon dropped. Drinan recalls speaking
to Hurley about the incident and the archbishops facetious remark.
Damn, Hurley said, according to Drinan. I
thought I was going to be famous.
Tax exempt donations can be made to the
Denis E. Hurley Educational Fund, Suite 1200, 11300 Rockville Pike, Rockville
MD 20852.
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Tom Fox is NCR publisher. He can be reached at
tfox@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, August 10,
2001
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