Lyn Scheuring, 80, co-founder and co-director of LAMP Catholic Ministries, died Sept. 20, at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx.
Born in Astoria to Maltese immigrant parents, she went to Immaculate Conception School; Bishop McDonnell M.H.S. in Crown Heights; and Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Her lifelong commitment to Catholic ministry and evangelization included an outreach to homeless teens in the East Village; living in a House of Prayer in Stanfordville, N.Y., and Beacon, N.Y., and a Catholic Charismatic Community in New Jersey; feeding the poor of the Bowery and in a Missionaries of Charity soup kitchen, where she met Mother Teresa; and serving in a poor Mexican parish for a year.
In 1981, she and her husband founded LAMP (Lay Apostolic Ministries with the Poor) Ministries, based in the Bronx, to evangelize among the materially poor.
In 1999, Cardinal John O’Connor granted LAMP Ministries a canonical status within the Church, affirming its Catholic identity. From the beginning, LAMP has served in the Brooklyn Diocese and been part of the Brooklyn Diocesan Council of Ecclesial Movements and New Communities.
At the invitation of Father Michael Scanlan, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, she and her husband brought LAMP to Franciscan University to strengthen its faith outreach among the poor, and to teach theology and Franciscan spirituality. In 1995, they returned to the Bronx to direct LAMP, with others from LAMP continuing LAMP’s outreach ministry in Steubenville.
A professed Secular Franciscan, she co-founded the Servants of God Fraternity, which meets monthly in Yonkers.
She wrote several books, including “Paradox of Poverty: St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of the Cross”; with her husband, “Two For Joy” and “God Longs for Family”; and with Marybeth Greene, “The Poor and the Good News,” about LAMP.
She is survived by her husband of 50 years, Tom; children, Maria Elbert, Malissa Leipold and Paul; five grandchildren; and a sister, Jean Coppa of St. Finbar, Bath Beach.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated at St. Frances de Chantal, the Bronx, Sept. 29. Cardinal Timothy Dolan was the celebrant and homilist.