Maria Stacey

Maria Stacey was, by every account that gathered to remember her, a fiery character: a woman who liked to work hard and get on with things, and who, in the early 1970s in Portugal, became the very first person to join the missionary Azulda in carrying the Divine Principle into a country still battling against considerable forces. She read the newly translated Spanish edition while back at university, recognised in its pages the Second Advent of Christ, and from that recognition built a life of devotion that would carry her across Europe.

Those first Portuguese years were demanding. The missionaries received no money from America, and Maria and Azulda lived frugally, sustained by prayer and fasting, though Maria was sometimes able to make substantial donations from her own family to help lay the foundation of the work in Portugal. Together, the two women witnessed widely, and those who knew them in that period remember them as warriors, two figures, as the officiator Ron put it, you would not have wanted to come up against from the other side.

When Rev. Moon initiated the world crusade in Europe, Maria moved to Paris and worked at the headquarters there, teaching introductory lectures in fluent French to the many young people who had been witnessed to. She joined fundraising teams in Italy and Germany before returning home to support the mission in Portugal. In 1978, when Rev. Moon came to Britain, she travelled to London with several Portuguese members and was again chosen, for her passionate heart and depth of spirit, to teach introductory lectures to new guests.

She was Blessed in marriage to Edward Stacey at the 1800 Couples Blessing in Manchester Gate, Ed perhaps the tallest member in Europe and Maria certainly not the shortest. Together they embraced the central-parent mission at the seminar centre in the manor house at Burra Haven Bay in Dunbar, East Lothian, where their children Francis and Theresa were born in 1981 and 1982. The family later moved to Huddersfield to lead the north of England region, then south to Livingston House in Chislehurst, and on to Cleeve House in the West Country, before finally settling in Pucklechurch.

In the West Country, Maria helped bless more than 400 couples in Bristol and the surrounding towns and was instrumental in blessing 420 generations of her own ancestors. She was knowledgeable about diet, herbs, and natural healing, intuitive in her guidance, and generous with both. In her last years, with her body failing, her hands stayed strong: she crocheted tirelessly, making hats, mittens, bags, and scarves, and turned her bedroom into something like a prayer room, filled with Rev. Moon's speeches and holy songs.

Asked in her final years how she was, she would answer simply, 'I'm doing my best,' replacing complaint with gratitude. She remained on fire for God to the end, fearless, passionate, dynamic, and is remembered as a pioneer whose blessed life of service and love stands worthy of praise.