Former Paulist Pastor Stan MacNevin Obituary

Father Stan MacNevin baptizing Joan and Dave Doiron's baby Tommy.

Father Stan MacNevin (age 82) died in his sleep in the Paulist Park Street house on Sunday morning, December 21, at about 8 o'clock. We had previously received word that Father Stan, the last Paulist pastor here(1982-1990), had recently been diagnosed with liver and pancreatic cancer and had entered hospice care at the Paulist Center.

Rev. Stanley F. MacNevin, CSP, 82, died Sunday morning at his home at the Paulist Center at 5 Park St. in Boston after a short illness.

Fr. MacNevin had been a Paulist priest since 1960, serving in many
worshipping communities and campus ministry settings.

Formally known as the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, the
Paulist Fathers were founded by Fr. Isaac Thomas Hecker as the first
religious congregation of Roman Catholic men established in the United
States. The Paulists have had a presence at the Park St. location for over a half-century.

A native of Dedham, Fr. MacNevin was born on August 10, 1926, the son of a
Baptist mother and a Congregationalist father. He converted to Roman
Catholicism in 1951 and, two years later, began his preparations for the
priesthood.

Fr. MacNevin's first assignment as a priest was at Boston's Paulist Center,
where he had been baptized and received the sacraments of initiation. He was ordained there by Richard Cardinal Cushing on January 25, 1960. He was also in residence at the Center from 1970-74, while he served in the campus ministry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From 1978 to 1979, he returned to the Center as Director and as Superior of
the Paulist Fathers Boston community. Later, after a sabbatical year of
study at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, he served again
as Superior of the Paulist Fathers Boston community from 1991-97. Then,
after retiring from active priesthood, he remained in residence at the
Center until his death.

Much of his life as a priest, however, was spent working in campus ministry
at universities across the United States, beginning with an assignment to
West Virginia University in Morgantown in 1962.

From 1966-70, he served in the campus ministry at Memphis State University
in Tennessee. While there, Fr. MacNevin was instrumental in helping students form the first fraternity for African Americans at the university. During his tenure in Memphis, he also became an advocate for the sanitation workers in that city in their battle for better wages. The protests there led eventually to the participation of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the resolution of the dispute in the workers' favor.

As chaplain at MIT in the 1970s, Fr. MacNevin established what were called
"floating liturgies," held at the homes of graduate students once a month, allowing the participants, in his words, "to share religious reflection proper to their educational status."

Serving as Director of the Newman Center at the Ohio State University from 1974-78, Fr. MacNevin helped establish a Pre-Cana team for marriage preparation. Because of the size of the university, it was not unusual for 100 couples to attend the team's periodic retreats.

While there, he also began a program of "staff-building" to provide support,
evaluation and feedback for lay members of the ministry team - a practice he later continued at other assignments. And, he instituted "Faith Retreats," which led to the formation of many small faith communities, providing the opportunity for students to share their religious experience with others.

Fr. MacNevin continued the "Faith Retreats" upon his assignment to the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he served from 1982-90, and added a practice in which he met with parishioners to discuss "the history of their community, what had worked well in the past, and what it was they hoped for in the future."

At Storrs, he also established a "Visitation Ministry, where participants, after a six-part training program, visited shuts-ins, bringing the sacraments and praying with them, as well as occasionally bringing small gifts of flowers or cards prepared by the community's children.

Fr. MacNevin is survived by a brother, Earl, of Venice Fla. and by several
nieces and nephews. His visiting hours will be on Friday, Dec. 26 from 6:30 to 7:30 PM followed by a vigil at the Paulist Center 5 Park St. Boston, where his Funeral Mass will also be celebrated on Sat. at 10:00AM. Burial will be in St. Joseph's Cemetery, West Roxbury.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Paulist Fathers at 5 Park St.
Boston 02108.