Myrtle Stanley, former director of what is now archdiocesan Missions Office, dies at 96

Myrtle Stanley, former director of the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Office of the Propagation of the Faith (now the Missions Office), died Feb. 6. She was 96. 

According to her son, Ben Stanley, she was the first lay person to hold the role. 

Overseeing the archdiocese’s home and foreign mission work from 1984 until 1995, she also directed the archdiocese’s Holy Childhood Association and Catholic Relief Services programs. 

In a 1984 interview with the Catholic Review upon her appointment, she described her purpose as to deal more effectively with the office’s educational aspect and to raise awareness in the archdiocese of the missionary nature of the church. 

“We serve the needs of peoples all over the world,” she said, noting that the office directed funds to schools, hospitals, care for the sick and emergency relief for victims of floods and earthquakes. 

Her son said she left the position not by choice but out of devotion to her husband, Theodore Freeland Stanley, who had been a chemist with the Baltimore City Department of Public Works. 

“He needed help,” Ben Stanley said of his father’s declining health. “I don’t think she really wanted to leave when she did. She felt compelled to do that.”

A Baltimore native, Stanley was raised Baptist and converted to Catholicism when her children attended St. Ann School in East Baltimore. She quickly became a pillar of the parish – leading a prayer group, serving as parish council secretary and occasionally offering Scripture reflections.

“It was a great experience to hear different takes on the Scripture,” said Father Joe Muth, pastor at St. Ann at the time and now retired. He noted that Stanley’s talks were particularly inspiring for young girls. “She was very strong in her spirit and very open in helping people.”

Later, at St. Matthew in Northwood, Stanley served as coordinator of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Her funeral Mass was offered Feb. 19 at St. Matthew. 

“She was a real compassionate, caring teacher,” Father Muth said. 

Stanley’s faith, Father Muth said, sustained her through profound personal loss – the deaths of her husband, a daughter and a son. 

“She freely talked about those experiences,” he said. “People were filled with wonder of her strength.”

Her son described her as “very scholarly,” adding that “school was everything to her.” Stanley earned a degree in chemistry from Morgan State University in 1951 but, unable to find work in the field, returned to earn a master’s degree in elementary education and taught in Baltimore City Public Schools for 25 years. She later earned a master’s degree in theology from St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Roland Park in 1987 and completed postgraduate coursework at Fordham University between 1989 and 1991.

Since 1990, she served as coordinator of Sisters in the Struggle, a group of Christian women dedicated to strengthening families, parishes and the broader community through prayer, Bible study and Christian living.

“I feel very blessed that she was my mother,” Ben Stanley said.

Email Katie V. Jones at kjones@CatholicReview.org

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