Guardian of the Light: Denis Hurley: Renewing the Church, Opposing Apartheid (review)

Paddy Kearney’s graceful biography chronicles the extraordinary life of Denis Hurley, longtime archbishop of Durban, South Africa, and ardent opponent of apartheid. Kearney’s perspective is that of a friend; between 1976 and 2004, he coordinated Diakonia, the ecumenical organization that Hurley founded in Durban to facilitate the social justice programs of the city’s churches. Guardian of the Light is not, however, hagiography. A shy man who disciplined himself to be extroverted, Hurley remained most comfortable talking about sports with his brothers. As a tall, large man, his physical presence could not be ignored. Deeply spiritual, eloquent, highly intelligent, and witty, he intimidated both friend and foe.

Hurley was born in Cape Town and educated in the Natal Province, Ireland, and Rome. In 1947, he became the youngest Catholic bishop. Four years later, at age thirty-five, he became the youngest archbishop. He was, he would later acknowledge, “fifteen years too young” (p. 53). The South Africa of Hurley’s youth had been segregated, but the oppressive laws of apartheid introduced in the late 1940s and early 1950s were of a different order. Catholics were a minority in an officially Protestant country whose new rulers viewed the Church as the “Roman threat.” By the late 1950s, Hurley had nevertheless persuaded the conservative Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) to condemn apartheid, although it would be another twenty years before the SACBC fully embraced his activism.

In the early 1960s, Hurley had what he characterized as “the greatest experience of my whole life,” when he participated in the Second Vatican Council (p. 93). He served on the commission on Catholic education and helped establish the International Commission on English in the Liturgy. The Council also considered artificial birth control, and under Pope John XXIII it appeared church policy might change. When Pope Paul VI opposed such a change, Hurley protested in print, arguing that while the pope had the right to make the decision, it did not reflect the Council’s debates. To Hurley’s disappointment, the pope also vetoed further discussion of priestly celibacy. Toward the end of his life, Hurley supported women’s ordination. For these reasons—and despite his courage as an anti-apartheid activist—Kearney concludes, Hurley was never made a cardinal.

As protests against apartheid escalated in the mid-1970s and the state became more violent, Hurley sought tangible ways to improve conditions for black South Africans and to enlighten whites. He backed the decision of Catholic sisters to open their schools to children of all races. He founded a school for deaf African children. He supported white conscientious objectors who refused to serve in the South African Defence Force. In the 1980s he convinced the SACBC to open Catholic churches to meetings of black trade unionists. With the SACBC he reached out to the African National Congress in exile in London and Zambia, part of a broader process that led to the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and his election as president in 1994.

Hurley retired as archbishop in 1992 and died in 2004. For all the grand narrative that defined his public life, he remained a shy and private man. The great strength of Guardian of the Light is that both Denis Hurley and the archbishop of Durban emerge.