The Reverend Ann Bonner-Stewart
Dear St. Mary’s Community,
We are very pleased and blessed to announce that the Reverend Ann Bonner-Stewart has been called to be the new Rector of St. Mary’s in Newton Lower Falls. This is the culmination of over a year of hard work, discernment and prayer by the Search Committee, who identified a number of excellent candidates. Ann was ultimately recommended on the basis of her abilities as pastor, preacher, community leader and as a woman of deep faith in God in Christ.
Ann is returning to the area after serving as chaplain at Saint Mary’s School, an independent Episcopal all-girls boarding and day high school, in Raleigh, North Carolina since 2009. She was originally ordained in Boston in 2006.
Rev. Bonner-Stewart was born in and raised in South Carolina. She attended Duke University, where she earned a degree in Economics and studied abroad in China and France. After college, Ann moved to Boston to be in the third cohort of Micah interns in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. As a Micah intern, she served at Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Dorchester, who sponsored her for ordination.
She earned a Master of Divinity, summa cum laude, from Yale Divinity School and a certificate in Anglican Studies from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.
Ann was ordained to the transitional diaconate in June 2006 at the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul in Boston. Ann’s first parish call was as associate rector at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, North Carolina, where she introduced new worship services and created new systems for communication and administration.
Ann has also served as a hospital chaplain in Bridgeport, Conn.; a guest theology instructor in Maseno, Kenya; and on the staff of Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas.
Ann will start her rectorship at St. Mary’s in late November with an official date to be determined and shared shortly.
Ann is married to Jeff, an electrical engineer. They have two school aged daughters, Claire and Celeste, and a cat named Speckles. Please let Cécile Tucker know if you would like to be part of a group who will help Ann and her family with getting settled at St. Mary’s.
We’re excited to embark on this next chapter for St. Mary’s along with Ann and her family. Thank you to Jeffrey Hughes, Lynn Farnell and the Search Committee for all their efforts to bring us to this point. Thank you also to the Rev. Dr. Paul Kolbet for his continuing service to St. Mary’s and support as Interim Priest.
Best,
Ann will be sending a letter of greeting to the community next week. In the meantime, we welcome her enthusiastically to St. Mary’s.
Kyle Marchesseault, Senior Warden
Cécile Tucker, Junior Warden