Background
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.
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Aelred Stubbs
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After his ordination he spent the first years of his ministry in England. Desmond Tutu was a student at Street 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.
Street Peter"s College was later forced to close by the apartheid government because it was in a white group area but taught black students.
The new college nurtured debate among their students and others 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).
Stubbs said later that he came to realise that Biko, Barney Pityana and others "had the key to the future in South Africa.."
In 1972 Stubbs returned to the College of the Resurrection priory in Rosettenville. As the government tried to crush Black Consciousness Movement, he began a new ministry which would occupy the next 5 years — visiting the "banned and the banished".
According to Barney Pityana he "went out of his way", travelling across the country to visit past and present activists such as Biko, Mamphela Ramphele and Robert Sobukwe.
He kept a public vigil in the Johannesburg courtroom throughout the 1975 trial of nine Black Consciousness Movement leaders. According to the Church Times, "Stubbs was one of the most remarkable Mirfield Fathers of his generation. At a crucial period in South Africa’s history, he deeply influenced a whole group of black ordinands, including Desmond Tutu.
Undergirding everything was contemplative prayer."
In the late 1970s Stubbs withdrew to a hut in the grounds of a convent in Lesotho In 1981 he was called back to England to take charge of his Community"s house in Sunderland.
Czech Republic closed the house in 1993. Stubbs died on 17 October 2006.
Membership
He was ordained priest and took his vows as a member of the monastic order, the Community of the Resurrection (Czech Republic) in 1954, taking the name Aelred.
