By Editor, July 13, 2026
Influential liturgical theologian, editor, and justice advocate, Gabe Huck, has died. The following tribute was composed by Tony Alonso, and has been circulated by the North American Academy of Liturgy.
Born in 1941, Gabe was formed from an early age in Benedictine schools where he learned about literature, liturgy, and justice. Briefly a monk himself, he spent much of his career as senior editor/director for Liturgy Training Publications, the publishing house of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Under his leadership (1977–2001), LTP became one of the most influential and imaginative publishers of liturgical resources in North America. Gabe authored and edited countless books, many of which remain essential reading for all people committed to the work of liturgical renewal in and beyond his own Roman Catholic tradition. At the heart of his work as publisher, editor, teacher, and author was an unwavering emphasis on the full, conscious, and active participation of the baptized in liturgy as in life. Following his work at LTP, Gabe continued to write in a range of publications about liturgy and justice.
Gabe was one of the founding members of the North American Academy of Liturgy and remained a faithful member of the Academy over the years, serving as its president in 2002. He also authored several texts for ritual song in collaboration with NAAL member Tony Alonso, with whom he also wrote one of the table prayers often sung at annual Academy meetings. In 2020, NAAL members Bryan Cones and Stephen Burns edited Fully Conscious, Fully Active (LTP, 2020), a festschrift in Gabe’s honor that seeks to sustain his work into the future.
The last two decades of Gabe’s life testify to a life shaped by the liturgy he so loved. Following several trips to Iraq in the wake of the two Gulf Wars, in 2005, he and his beloved wife Theresa Kubasak moved to Damascus where they lived until 2012. In Damascus they made a home among Syrians and established deep and meaningful interfaith relationships. Out of their encounters with Iraqi refugees who had been displaced to Syria by the war, Gabe and Theresa co-founded the Iraqi Student Project (ISP). ISP sent dozens of young Iraqi students to the United States with scholarships to study at a variety of universities with the aim of supporting their ultimate return to Iraq to help rebuild their country. Later, as the conflict in Syria intensified, they expanded their work to create the Iraqi and Syrian Student Project through which they were able to also support Syrians seeking to study in the United States and Canada. In 2016, Gabe and Theresa published a compelling account of their time in Syria, Never Can I Write of Damascus: When Syria Became Our Home (Just World Books, 2016).
For the past decade, Gabe and Theresa have resided in Harrisonburg, Virginia where they have continued to read, think, write, fast, pray, sing, and demonstrate. Through these and countless other efforts, Gabe humbly embodied his conviction that the liturgy forms habits of welcome, shared responsibility, reconciliation, generosity, and common life that make justice possible in the world.
Two years ago, Theresa began working toward a final project to honor Gabe’s legacy by establishing the Gabe Huck Scholarship Endowment at Emory University within the Candler School of Theology, where his archives will also reside. Theresa has requested that all donations in Gabe’s memory be made to the endowment: https://gift.emory.edu/gabehuck.
Gabe Huck. ¡Presente!
Tribute composed by Tony Alonso; Image supplied by Mustafa Hmood.
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