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…