Denis Hurley

Who was Denis Hurley?

Denis Eugene Hurley O.M.I. was the South African Roman Catholic Vicar Apostolic of Natal and Bishop, and later Archbishop of Durban, from 1946 until 1992. He was born in Cape Town and spent his early years on Robben Island, where his father was the lighthouse keeper. In 1951, Hurley was appointed Archbishop of Durban, and the youngest archbishop in the world at that time.

Hurley was an active participant in the Second Vatican Council, which he described as "the greatest project of adult education ever held in the world".

An outspoken opponent of apartheid, as chairman of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, he drafted the first of the ground-breaking pastoral letters in which the bishops denounced apartheid as "blasphemy" and "intrinsically evil." Upon his retirement as archbishop. he served as the Chancellor of the University of Natal.