Retired Archbishop Francis T. Hurley of Anchorage, Alaska, died Jan. 10 at his home in Anchorage. He was two days shy of his 89th birthday.

He served as archbishop for a quarter-century, from 1976 to 2001. For six years before that, he was a bishop in Juneau.

In February of 1970, Archbishop Hurley was appointed auxiliary bishop of Juneau. He was ordained by his brother, Bishop Mark Hurley of Santa Rosa, Calif. – the first time ever in the U.S. that a bishop had ordained his brother to the episcopacy. The following year, then-Auxiliary Bishop Hurley became head of the diocese.

As relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union began to thaw, Archbishop Hurley, by this time in Anchorage, founded a mission church in Russia. In December of 1990, he traveled with Father Michael Shields to Magadan, a city in eastern Russia and the site of a former Soviet gulag. In a theater, they celebrated a Christmas Mass – the first public Mass in the city’s history. Three hundred people attended.