alaskaFather LeRoy Clementich, here clearing off his airplane on a December 1994 morning at Anchorage's Merrill Field, said that aviation helped him fulfill a "spiritual responsibility."

When LeRoy Clementich arrived in Anchorage in 1993 to start a new job, his boss asked whether he was a pilot. Clementich said that he was. That delighted the boss, pilot Francis Hurley — Archbishop Francis Hurley.

Flying in Alaska then was, and remains, vitally important because Alaska’s towns and villages lie far apart, and many places are inaccessible to automobiles. While Alaska is the country’s largest state, its population ranks forty-seventh, with a ratio of just one person per square mile.

Such a geographic-demographic reality presents as great a challenge to the business of the spirit as it does to commerce.

Hurley, Father Clementich, and a third cleric interviewed for this article, Father Scott Garrett, cited the same advantages of general aviation in Alaska that typical pilots might: convenience, freedom, and enormous time savings in doing their jobs. They also mentioned the rewards unique to their profession: leading Catholic services in villages with such magical names as King Salmon for very small groups in homes, libraries, logging camps, fishing canneries, Salvation Army centers, and even Protestant churches; and the post-Mass socializing they enjoyed with parishioners over coffee, donuts, beef jerky, and sandwiches before jumping into their airplanes and flying on to their next stops.

The payoff, they said, lies in delivering religious sustenance to people isolated by great distances from churches and larger communities.

“The whole thrust was to be present to the people: Get to meet ’em, get to know ’em,” said Hurley, now retired in Anchorage. “The big draw of the airplane was being able to reach people wherever they were and for whatever occasion. If the parish would have a celebration, I could go.”

Said Clementich, also retired and living in Indiana: “You’re using [aviation] for, I hate to say a ‘holy purpose,’ but for a spiritual responsibility. People you’re coming to see wouldn’t be able to have those services if you didn’t come in by airplane.”

Soon after arriving in Juneau in 1970 to serve as bishop, Hurley took flying lessons. Partaking of Alaska’s wondrous landscape wasn’t Hurley’s primary motivator. Instead, he had a more practical reason: to reach his flock.

Because most communities near Juneau were, like the capital, along the water, Hurley flew there. A Cessna 180 was Hurley’s “workhorse,” he said — a floatplane with a pontoon that allowed him to travel to towns each weekend. “Having a plane let me do all that,” he explained. “I used the plane much like I’d use a car.” After transferring to Anchorage, where he served as bishop and then archbishop, Hurley covered an area as far west as the Aleutian Islands.

As a parish priest, Clementich ministered to communities throughout the Anchorage diocese and acted as a liaison to nuns and other administrators in small parishes. He would fly into a town to run a late-afternoon or evening service on Saturday, depart before nightfall or stay overnight, then make two more stops to deliver Sunday Mass.

Clementich flew his Cherokee 180 as far as Glennallen, 250 miles to Anchorage’s east. When ministering in Dutch Harbor, a fishing center in the far west of the Aleutians, he flew commercial.

Garrett, the only current Catholic priest in Alaska who flies, came to the southwest town of Dillingham four years ago to succeed Jim Kelly as pastor. Kelly, a retired Navy chaplain who flew his whole life and whom Hurley recalled as a “very, very good pilot,” was killed when his airplane struck the top of a mountain.

Garrett flies to 20 different places. Some, like Ugashik — population: seven, at the eastern approach to the Aluetians — he gets to just once a year. He totes his “Mass kit” in a black tool bag, containing such items as a chalice bowl, altar cloth, candles, a cross, and bottles of wine and water.

Hurley, Clementich, and Garrett all said that Alaska’s weather evokes great concern and demands extra caution: snow and ice in winter; clouds, fog, strong winds, and poor visibility in all seasons. The weather’s unpredictability — “treacherous,” Garrett called conditions in the Bristol Bay area — causes havoc to schedules and necessitates flexibility in planning trips. Often, storms must be waited out, even for days, before proceeding.

Garrett said that he enjoys the adventure inherent in the job and called it “a great way to minister.” General aviation “makes me use all my God-given skills. Here I am, being able to build up God’s kingdom and going to the ends of the Earth to bring the Gospel,” Garrett said of his work.

“That is the greatest feeling I can have as a priest, bringing sacraments so that the Catholic Church can stay alive in those areas. That’s the ultimate thing to do. I can’t see doing it any other way.” —By Hillel Kuttler