Aelred Stubbs

Aelred Stubbs (2 August 1923 – 17 October 2004) was an Anglican priest and monk, influential in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa during the 1970s.

Early life

He was born Anthony Richard Peter Stubbs on 2 August 1923 and educated at Eton College, Oxford University, and the theological College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, Yorkshire.

In his wartime service, he was a part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and worked behind enemy lines in Northern Europe on works of sabotage. He cited his wartime experience as a major impetus towards seeking ordination.

Church career

After his ordination he spent the first years of his ministry in England. In 1960 he was sent to the College of the Resurrection and St Peter in Rosettenville as principal of the seminary in which the CR fathers trained almost all black priests for the northern dioceses of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa for most of the 20th century. Desmond Tutu was a student at St Peter's and was identified by Stubbs as a possible black candidate to be principal of the college. He helped Tutu to study at King's College London, to further this aim.

St Peter's College was later forced to close by the apartheid government because it was in a white group area but taught black students. Stubbs successfully argued for its relocation to Alice, Eastern Cape as part of the multi-denominational Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa. The new college nurtured debate among their students and others.

Anti-Apartheid activism

Stubbs became known for his work in South Africa against the apartheid regime (so much so that the South African government refused to let him re-enter the country after his mother's funeral in 1977).

Later life

In the late 1970s Stubbs withdrew to a hut in the grounds of a convent in Lesotho.