The 13 nieces and nephews of Albany Bishop Emeritus Howard J. Hubbard, who died last week, are condemning Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger for what they said was a “detestable” homily that he gave on Friday at the former bishop’s funeral Mass.
During the muted, 17-minute homily that Scharfenberger delivered at St. Pius X Church in Loudonville, he sidestepped highlighting details of the 84-year-old Hubbard’s decades of service.
His decision to avoid heaping accolades on the deceased bishop may have been as a result of the controversies that have engulfed Hubbard over the past two decades, as well as his alienation from the diocese following his retirement nine years ago.
Those controversies have included Hubbard’s decision to get married last month after the Vatican had rejected his request to be removed from the priesthood; his admissions that he and the church had mishandled clergy sex abuse by secretly shuffling accused priests into treatment centers and between parishes, and allegations leveled against him by 11 men and women who accused him of sexually abusing them as children — accusations he denied.
The statement from Hubbard’s nieces and nephews, many who live in the Capital Region, noted that he had publicly acknowledged and apologized for his handling of sexual abuse cases by priests and others.
But they said that should not have overshadowed his accomplishments and advocacy that began more than a decade before he was appointed bishop of the 14-county diocese in 1977 at the age of 38.
“As a native son, Father Howard gave six decades of his life to God and the church, and he touched thousands of the local faithful along the way, and there was not a single mention of this unparalleled service,” the statement from the family reads.
The nieces and nephews — the children of Hubbard’s two sisters — said Scharfenberger’s homily caused some parishioners to appear to avoid him when receiving communion at the ceremony, and that they saw a few others leave the service early. Their statement said that when they confronted Scharfenberger after the Mass and “asked for an explanation about his misguided homily, the current bishop replied simply, 'I’ll pray for you.' When pushed further, he repeated the same phrase, turned, and scurried off, demonstrating none of the courage of his predecessor to confront the difficulties of real people.”
“The current bishop’s intentional failure to address Father Howard’s servitude over six decades was detestable. Father Howard did nothing less than reestablish the moral standing of the local church during his leadership, and he deserved so much better.”
Read the family’s full statement below or click here:
Friday’s funeral Mass had followed a private service a day earlier at St. Pius, where dozens of priests, nuns, friends and family members of Hubbard’s attended a service that had not been publicly announced.
Hubbard died Aug. 19 at Albany Medical Center Hospital, two days after he suffered a stroke. He was a leader of a liberal wing of the U.S. Catholic Church and his outspoken activism included supporting peace and social justice, and championing efforts to abolish the death penalty and institute prison reforms.
Scharfenberger did not talk about Hubbard’s work that included founding Providence House, a crisis intervention center, nor his efforts to form and expand Hope House, a residential recovery program for people with substance use disorders.
He said of Hubbard’s life that there is “much to be celebrated and much to be contemplated,” adding that the former bishop was “not an uncontroversial figure at times.”
Scharfenberger also avoided commenting directly on the clergy abuse scandals or Hubbard’s role in those matters.
“Maybe unfortunately whatever was broken in his life — and make no mistake about it, priests are human beings, they are broken and they are sinful, just like you and me — and sometimes unfortunately their own brokenness and sinfulness can get in the way of what they really want to do, which is to lead souls to the Lord,” Scharfenberger said at the service.
On Tuesday, Scharfenberger issued a short statement in response to the family’s statement, saying: “This is a difficult time for many. My prayers continue for all family, and friends, that they may feel God’s healing peace.”
Their statement notes that Hubbard “was to so many of those who knew him a pillar of strength in the faith community and a symbol of extraordinary grace for members of the Albany diocese. ... (H)e offered up his entire ecumenical life to those he served and beyond. He was both a 'street priest,' ministering to the addicted, the destitute, and the disadvantaged, and a preacher who could impress congregations of any size. ... He possessed a bottomless reserve of empathy.”
Hubbard, who did not smoke or drink, had expressed to those close to him that he was devastated by the accusations of sexual abuse that have been made against him.
“I hope and pray I will live long enough to see my name cleared once and for all,” Hubbard said in a statement 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.”
In the statement from his nieces and nephews, they said that Scharfenberger could have invoked more about Hubbard’s life than general statements about all people being sinners and “priests in our lives that may not have measured up.”
“There was a long list of achievements to draw from, achievements that would illustrate what an extraordinary shepherd Father Howard was,” the nieces and nephews wrote in their statement. “But the homily failed to mention his service to God, his spiritual leadership in the Albany diocese, and his care for the less advantaged. The presiding bishop opted to turn a celebration of an incredible life into a condemnation of sin.”
Hubbard, who retired as bishop in 2014, 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.
In 1977, he succeeded Bishop Edwin B. Broderick, who was named director of Catholic Relief Services in New York City eight months earlier.
A Troy native, Hubbard attended St. Patrick’s School and La Salle Institute before studying at Mater Christi Minor Seminary in 1956 in Albany. 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 thenRev. Edward J. Maginn, auxiliary bishop of the Albany Diocese, to establish Providence House, the multi-service agency serving that section’s financially disadvantaged.
He later founded Hope House, the 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
In a 2021 deposition of Hubbard taken as part of the pre-trial discovery in the roughly 400 lawsuits filed against the diocese, 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 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.”
Hubbard had requested laicization last year as he struggled with what he said was a church policy he instituted 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.”