The Rev. Toni Freeman Stuart, assisting priest at St. Michael’s University Church in Isla Vista and former vicar of the Chapel of St. Francis in L.A.’s Atwater Village, died Jan. 2 in Santa Barbara where she was hospitalized following treatment for cancer. She was 88 and well known for pro-justice advocacy.
Bishop John Harvey Taylor visited Stuart and administered last rites on Jan. 1 at Cottage Hospital. Arrangements for a memorial service are pending.
Stuart is survived by two daughters and their spouses, Susan Stuart-Shuman and Todd Shuman of Tehachapi, Calif., and Jane Edel and Mike Edel of Elk Grove, Calif.; a son, Dan Stuart and his spouse, Carla Almore-Stuart, of Altadena, and their families including four grandchildren Tasha Shuman, Max Edel, Stephen Edel, and Michael Stuart; a sister, Sue Stratton of Seal Beach, Calif., and a brother, Larry Freeman, of Santa Barbara.
A resident of Carpinteria, Stuart began assisting at St. Michael’s – located near the UC Santa Barbara campus – after serving as rector of St. Matthew’s, Sacramento, from 2000 to 2005, having been vicar of St. Francis, Atwater Village, from 1993 to 2000. Previously she served as interim vicar at St. Thomas, Hacienda Heights, in 1993 and assisted at St. Paul’s, Pomona, from 1991 to 1993 and as associate at All Saints, Highland Park, from 1989 to 1991.
Stuart served as an elected member of Diocesan Council from 1991 to 1994 and the board of the diocesan Episcopal Church Women in the same years. She was elected to a term as a judge on the diocesan Ecclesiastical Trial Court in 1995, the same year she was named to the diocesan Program Group on Missions. In 1991, she began assisting the work of Episcopal Migration Ministries within the Diocese of Los Angeles.
Ordained to the priesthood in 1990 by Los Angeles Bishop Frederick H. Borsch, Stuart was a graduate of Bloy House and the Claremont Theological School. She also held a bachelor’s degree earned in 1959 from Stanford University.
Born in Bakersfield, Calif., and raised in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, Freeman became a member of the ecumenical Immaculate Heart Community in 1998. At a 2023 celebration hosted when the community relocated its offices to St. Paul’s Commons in Echo Park, Stuart recounted being fascinated as a girl walking past Immaculate Heart High School at Franklin and Western avenues and stopping in at an open house to visit the nuns in residence who disaffiliated from the Roman Catholic Church and formed a new order of lay and clergy members from several denominations.
A former community organizer in Pasadena, Freeman advocated for various peace-related causes and regularly joined a cadre of protesters who assembled with anti-war signs every Friday afternoon at the corner of Carpinteria Boulevard and Linden.
A gifted writer, Stuart is the author of the 2000 reflection Adventures of the Soul and various articles as well as poetry.