ALBANY (NY)
Times Union [Albany NY]
August 19, 2023
By Brendan J. Lyons
Career of 1960s “street priest” who became the region’s longest-tenured Catholic leader was shadowed by grave mishandling of sexual abuse cases
Albany Bishop Emeritus Howard J. Hubbard, who began his clerical service as a “street priest” in Albany’s most challenged neighborhoods and rose to lead the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany for 37 years, died Saturday afternoon — days after suffering a stroke on Thursday. The 84-year-old had been hospitalized in critical condition and was on a ventilator at Albany Medical Center Hospital, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
His death came less than a month after Hubbard, who retired as bishop in 2014, had married a woman in the wake of the Vatican rejecting his extraordinary request to be removed from the priestly state — a process known as laicization.
That news came after years in which Hubbard’s reputation had been shredded by his own admissions that he and other Catholic leaders had over the course of decades covered up credible allegations of the sexual abuse of children by priests and others — including shuffling abusers between churches without sharing information about them with parishioners or even the parents of the abused. In some cases, those priests, who were often sent to Catholic-run treatment centers, went on to victimize other children.
Hubbard’s mishandling of hundreds of sexual abuse allegations — including being accused himself of molesting at least 10 children — stood in contrast to his legacy as a leader of a liberal wing of the U.S. Catholic Church. His outspoken activism included supporting peace and social justice, and he championed efforts to abolish the death penalty and institute prison reforms.
That advocacy began more than a decade before Hubbard, at age 38, was appointed in February 1977 as the nation’s youngest Roman Catholic bishop at the time, and the first bishop of the Albany diocese to have been born in the Capital Region.
He succeeded Bishop Edwin B. Broderick, who was named Director of Catholic Relief Services in New York City eight months earlier.
Jerry Jennings, who was mayor of Albany for two decades until his retirement in 2013, said he was a young teacher at the former Philip Schuyler High School when he met Hubbard, then a priest, in 1972.
“I saw him on the streets,” Jennings said. “He genuinely cared about people, kids especially, and those with alcohol problems, drug problems. I mean, he was a leader, there was no doubt when it came to creating programs and caring for people that were challenged. You know, his record shows that, too. As a mayor, I always had a very good relationship with him. … It’s unfortunate what the church is going through right now but I always had a lot of respect for Bishop Hubbard.”
The ‘street priest’
A Troy native, Hubbard attended St. Patrick’s School and La Salle Institute before studying at Mater Christi Minor Seminary in Albany in 1956. He received a degree in philosophy from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers before final preparations for the priesthood at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
He was ordained a priest of the Albany Diocese in December 1963 at the Church of St. Ignatius in Rome — a passage that occurred near the midpoint of the Second Vatican Council, a two-year initiative to modernize the global faith structure and interaction with the faithful and the world at large. Hubbard did postgraduate studies in social services at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Hubbard’s early career as a priest was spent ministering to the poor of Albany’s South End, work that earned him a reputation as a “street priest.” Despite being ordained only three years, Hubbard in 1966 was asked by Rev. Edward J. Maginn, auxiliary bishop of the Albany Diocese, to establish Providence House, a multi-service agency serving that section’s financially disadvantaged.
He later founded Hope House, a drug abuse center that grew out of Providence House. He served as the founding president of LIVCORP, a program that provided group homes for people with developmental disabilities; he also served as president of Albany’s Urban League.
During his time in South End, Hubbard was known for making one-on-one connections with the residents. Stories persist of the times he would find apartments or housing for those without them, drive those suffering from addictions to detox facilities and spearhead food collections for the hungry.
Hubbard years later made it clear that the term “street priest” did not originate with him. “I never used that designation, but the papers did from time to time,” he said in a 2021 deposition on sex abuse allegations in the diocese. He went on to say the appellation was frequently applied to him as a negative. “Somebody who was opposing me said that.”
Father Peter Young, an iconic Albany priest who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Hubbard in the South End in the 1960s, had recalled their work in that era in an interview with the Times Union a decade ago. Young, who died three years ago, went on to build a statewide housing, industries and treatment program that provided opportunities for ex-convicts and others, including one that operated from the former rectory where he lived with Hubbard in the 1960s.
While the colorful and exuberant Young brought a more aggressive approach to his work, Hubbard deployed a measured and pragmatic style as they joined forces and initially opened a treatment center to help a couple dozen men who were suffering from alcoholism.
“It was a war down there in those days,” Young recalled in a 2013 interview with the Times Union. “Guys were dying every day. We were revolutionaries and Howard was with me every step of the way. I was an angry combatant. Howard calmed me down. He’s much smarter and more diplomatic than I am.”
The dichotomy of Hubbard included his deep respect for the church’s teachings and traditions while he also challenged those with which he disagreed, including advocating for the ordination of women as priests — something the Vatican opposed. His other priorities included pushing for free syringes for drug users to prevent the spread of AIDS and, as early as 1966, urging white Catholics to confront racism and apologize to Black people.
Kevin A. Luibrand, a Capital Region attorney who has served as president of Young’s organizations for 40 years, said he was a child when his mother would drag him to downtown Albany almost weekly to spend time with Hubbard and Young, who was her first cousin.
“There was a lot of street ministry things going on and as kids we were just hanging around, playing hide and go seek, but I knew Hubbard my whole life,” Luibrand said. “I knew the core of him as a man, and I know he’s not capable of (the sexual abuse) he was accused of. I also know that he was abandoned by the church. A lot of people that enjoyed social status because they could say they were friends of the bishop also abandoned him. And all he wanted to do was to clear his name, and it’s disappointing that he won’t at least have that opportunity.”
Luibrand said that in the 1980s, he was on Hubbard’s legal team in the diocese’s prolonged court battle in which the bishop, a fierce right-to-life advocate, had gone to court seeking to block the state Health Department’s approval of two abortion clinics in Hudson and Albany. It was the first challenge of its kind by a U.S. Roman Catholic diocese — a case the diocese eventually lost at the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.
In 1977, less than two weeks after Hubbard had received word from the pope that he would become bishop of the 14-county Albany diocese, he held a news conference saying that the appointment “fills me with great joy.” He added, “I am grateful to His Holiness for the trust he has placed in me, and I affirm my loyalty and devotion to him as Peter’s successor, and to the Holy See.”
Later, he pledged to foster cooperation and goodwill to other Christian churches and the Jewish faith in the diocese, as well as echoing back to his early career by promising to focus on “the poor, the alienated and the oppressed.”
Hubbard’s nearly four decades as bishop marked the longest tenure of any leader in the history of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.
Although he was widely revered for much of his tenure, the decades were marked with a steadily rising number of controversies, including a 2004 investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by Hubbard related to claims he had taken part in sexual relationships with at least two men.
That investigation, which cost the diocese roughly $2 million, was led by former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White. It ended with a 200-page report that found “no credible evidence” to back up a man’s allegations about sexual encounters with the bishop.
‘Respect for the priesthood’
Hubbard also faced fierce criticism for the diocese’s mishandling of sexual abuse allegations during his tenure.
In recent years, facing an avalanche of lawsuits filed under New York’s Child Victims Act, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, Hubbard and the New York archdiocese had waged a series of court battles in which they fought unsuccessfully to limit the materials that would be turned over to attorneys for hundreds of alleged victims of child sexual abuse.
The diocese fought nearly every pre-trial discovery request for its internal files on clergy abuse. Those legal battles, including appeals, had dragged out the litigation — which is now on hold due to the diocese filing for bankruptcy earlier this year. Attorneys for many of the victims had criticized the diocese’s legal strategy, contending it was being done as alleged abusers, their victims and witnesses have begun to die as they grow old. Three of the 10 people who accused Hubbard of sexual abuse have died. He has denied sexually abusing anyone.
In a 2021 deposition of Hubbard taken as part of the pre-trial discovery in those roughly 400 lawsuits, he conceded that the diocese had systematically concealed incidents of child sexual abuse and did not alert law enforcement agencies when they discovered it, saying their actions, in part, were intended to avoid scandal and preserve “respect for the priesthood.”
That deposition of Hubbard, which took place over four days and was released last year under a court order, took place eight years after he had submitted his letter of resignation to Pope Francis when he reached the mandated age of 75. On Feb. 11, 2014, the Vatican announced it had been accepted.
The former bishop also confirmed that many of the records documenting the sexual abuse allegations were kept in secret files that only he and other top church officials could access. He said the sealed files included allegations of abuse as well as records on priests accused of other forms of wrongdoing, such as financial misconduct or alcohol abuse.
The deposition, which was released after attorneys removed the names of alleged victims, confirmed the efforts by the former bishop and the diocese to conceal incidents of sexual abuse when Hubbard was bishop.
“There was a sense in those days that these crimes should be handled with a minimum of publicity that might re-victimize a minor,” Hubbard had said, adding that church leaders’ “failure to notify the parish and the public when a priest was removed or restored was a mistake.”
The Archdiocese of New York separately had waged a legal battle to block the disclosure of more than 1,400 pages of internal records related to its investigations of Hubbard.
The records, many of which were eventually turned over to attorneys for alleged sexual abuse victims, were being sought in connection with a Child Victims Act case filed against Hubbard, the Albany diocese and deceased former priest Francis P. Melfe, who like Hubbard is a target of multiple child sexual abuse claims.
The archdiocese’s records on the former bishop were created under disciplinary procedures known as “Vos Estis” that were mandated by Pope Francis in 2019 to govern the investigations of child sexual abuse allegations against bishops or other church superiors. The pope’s mandate also included examinations of any alleged interference with investigations of abuse by a bishop.
The attorneys for the archdiocese argued that the records are protected from disclosure under the First Amendment. They contended the “production and review of such documents would necessarily excessively entangle the court in matters of internal church governance and call into question the Archdiocese and Cardinal (Timothy) Dolan’s internal processes in exclusively ecclesiastical matters governed by religious law.”
An unusual marriage
Hubbard, who suffered a minor stroke last summer, said in an open letter he provided to the Times Union earlier this month that he “asked the Vatican for relief from my obligations as a priest and permission to return to the lay state. In whatever time I have left on this Earth, I hope to be able to serve God and the people of our community as a lay person.”
In the letter, he confirmed that he had “fallen in love with a wonderful woman who has helped and cared for me and who believes in me.”
His personal relationship with the unidentified woman was a factor in his decision last year to request to be laicized, a process under Canon Law in which a bishop, priest or deacon are formally removed from the status of being a member of the clergy. Hubbard’s request was made eight years after he had retired from his role as bishop.
“In March, I received notice from the Vatican that my request had been denied. I was encouraged to wait patiently and prayerfully and to continue to abstain from public ministry until seven civil lawsuits against me alleging sexual misconduct had been adjudicated,” Hubbard wrote in the letter addressed to his colleagues and friends.
Albany Bishop Edward Scharfenberger wrote a letter that was distributed to the diocese and its congregations noting the church would not acknowledge the marriage.
“While he is not permitted to represent himself as a priest or perform the sacraments in public, Bishop Hubbard remains a retired bishop of the Roman Catholic Church,” Scharfenberger wrote. “He remains a retired bishop of the Roman Catholic Church and therefore cannot enter into marriage.”
Hubbard had requested laicization last year as he struggled with what he said was a church policy that prohibited a priest accused of sexual abuse “from functioning publicly as a priest, even if the allegations are false, as they are in my case.”
Hubbard, who would have turned 85 in October, noted that he implemented the policy that he said had deprived him of “the single greatest joy of my life — serving our community as a Catholic priest in my retirement years.”
But the Albany diocese released a statement last November in response to Hubbard’s assertions, saying it would “like to correct a point in some reports that said there is a diocesan policy that forbids an accused bishop from sacramental ministry. … (I)n the case of Bishop Hubbard, it is he alone who voluntarily removed himself from any public celebration of sacraments.” (It’s unclear whether that policy, which had been put in place by Hubbard more than two decades ago, had been discontinued after he retired.)
The bishop emeritus had said he would continue to fight the abuse lawsuits against him in court and maintained that he was innocent of those allegations.
“I hope and pray I will live long enough to see my name cleared once and for all,” Hubbard said last year. “While the pain that I have felt as an individual falsely accused is great, it can never approach the devastation experienced by victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy or others in a position of authority in our society. I also continue to pray daily for the children, adults and families who have suffered that they will experience healing and reconciliation.”
Last year, two brothers who grew up in Warren County in a devout Catholic family came forward and alleged that Gary Mercure, a former priest in their childhood parish who was later convicted of raping young boys in Massachusetts, had sexually abused them on multiple occasions over a period of years and that Hubbard took part in some of the assaults involving one of them.
The brothers had testified against Mercure at his 2011 criminal trial in Pittsfield, where the former priest was sentenced to two decades in prison following his conviction on charges of raping two other altar boys. They did not file a lawsuit against Hubbard, and their allegations are not counted among the cases involving 10 others who accused Hubbard of sexual abusing them as children.
In response to the news of Hubbard’s death, they issued a statement Saturday, saying, “While the pain that we have felt as victims of sexual abuse is devastating, it can never approach the devastation that Hubbard is currently experiencing based on Catholic teachings.”
“The clergy and those in a position of authority continue refusing to help all known victims and would rather play politics,” the statement continued. “Praying daily for the children, adults and families who have suffered so that they will experience healing and reconciliation is just more talk. We need action rather words.”
Brendan J. Lyons is a managing editor for the Times Union overseeing the Capitol Bureau and investigations. Lyons joined the Times Union in 1998 as a crime reporter before being assigned to the investigations team. He became editor of the investigations team in 2013 and began overseeing the Capitol Bureau in 2017. You can reach him at blyons@timesunion.com or 518-454-5547.