Lyn Scheuring

Lyn Scheuring, co-founder and co-director of LAMP Catholic Ministries, died Sept. 20 at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx. She was 80.

Cardinal Dolan will offer the Funeral Mass Saturday, Sept. 29, at 10 a.m. at St. Frances de Chantal Church, the Bronx.

LAMP (Lay Apostolic Ministries with the Poor) Catholic Ministries is a lay missionary association serving the poor through Catholic evangelization in New York City. Tom Scheuring, with whom Mrs. Scheuring celebrated 50 years of marriage in June, is also a co-founder and co-director of LAMP, which began in 1981.

In 1999, Cardinal John O’Connor granted LAMP Ministries canonical status, affirming its Catholic identity. A year earlier, he had invited LAMP to be among the original 10 groups on the Archdiocesan Council for Ecclesial Movements and New Communities.

In the early 1990s, the Scheurings were asked by the then-president of Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio to bring LAMP there to strengthen its faith and outreach to the poor, and to teach theology. In addition, Mrs. Scheuring taught courses in Franciscan spirituality.

In earlier years, the couple trained in missiology and Spanish in San Antonio, after which they served an impoverished Mexican parish for a year.

The Scheurings, both Secular Franciscans, also co-founded the Servants of God Secular Franciscan Fraternity that meets monthly at St. Leopold Friary in Yonkers.

She was the author of “Paradox of Poverty: St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of the Cross,” based on her doctoral dissertation.

Born in Astoria, Queens, she earned a doctorate in theology and a master’s in religious studies from Fordham University. She also studied at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., after serving in social work with Catholic Charities in Appalachia.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Scheuring is survived their three children: Maria Elbert, Malissa Leipold and Paul; five grandchildren; and her sister, Jean Copppa.

Burial will be at St. Raymond’s Cemetery, the Bronx.