Sister Amelia Stenger, 77, an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph, died Saturday, March 28, 2026, at Mount Saint Joseph, in her 58th year of religious life. She was a native of Glennonville, Mo.
Sister Amelia had an inexhaustible spirit, always looking forward to her next idea and project. She was passionate about God’s creation and loved to work in the flower beds and teach children to be good stewards of the earth. She was a driving force behind the creation of the Memory Meditation Garden and the Rosary Walk at Maple Mount. She loved the history of her community – her last project involved working with the archivist to create the Heritage Room on campus.
She was a 1967 graduate of Mount Saint Joseph Academy, and in 2025, was honored by the Alumnae Association with the Maple Leaf award as an outstanding graduate – an award she created in 2000. She was a 1974 graduate of Brescia College, and in 2022 she was honored as one of its Distinguished Alumni. She earned a master’s degree in education from Eastern Kentucky University in 1980, and a master’s in administration from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn., in 1986.
She was a teacher in Kentucky at Precious Blood School, Owensboro, (1971-74), then both principal and teacher at Immaculate Conception School, Earlington (1975-77), Christ the King School, Madisonville (1977-82), and St. Joseph School, Bowling Green (1982-84). She was the first female superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Owensboro (1984-91) and then the Archdiocese of Louisville (1991-97).
From 1997-2010, she was director of the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center. During that time, she was instrumental in creating the Ursuline Flatboat Adventure, which recreated the journey of the pioneer Sisters who arrived from Louisville in 1874. She served as director of Development for the Ursuline Sisters (2010-16), then was elected as congregational leader (2016-22). She served as quilting coordinator in Mission Advancement (2022-26), where she was instrumental in beginning Quilt Bingo.
Survivors include the members of her religious community; siblings John Stenger, of Poplar Bluff, Mo.; Frank Stenger, Campbell, Mo., and Mary Teder, St. Charles, Mo.; nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, John and Mary Stenger; and siblings Teresa Reale, Ben Stenger, Al Stenger, and Genevieve Siebert.
The funeral Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 7, at Mount Saint Joseph, where visitation will begin Monday, April 6, at 4 p.m., with a wake service following at 6:30 p.m. Burial will be in the Motherhouse cemetery.
Glenn Funeral Home and Crematory, Owensboro, is handling arrangements.
Donations in memory of Sister Amelia may be made to the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, 8001 Cummings Road, Maple Mount, KY 42356.
Wake reflection
By Sister Sharon Sullivan, congregational leader
April 6, 2026
Evening prayer for Friday, March 27, in the publication Give Us This Day, featured verses from Psalm 40. And we prayed:
I waited, I waited for the Lord,
and God stooped down to me, having heard my cry.
. . . The Lord put a new song into my mouth,
praise of our God. . . [and I sang]
How many are the wonders and designs
that you have worked for us,
O Lord my God.
And a few hours later in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, March 28th, our loving God, hearing the final verse of Sister Amelia’s life-long song, gathered His daughter home in His loving arms.
Seventy-seven years earlier, on an autumn Sunday, September 26, 1948, Amelia Margaret Stenger was born – the seventh child in the family of blacksmith and farmer John Adolph and his wife Mary Teresa Stenger. This special seventh child, born on the sabbath day – “bonny and blithe, and good and gay” – was baptized the very next day, Monday, September 27th, at Saint Teresa Catholic Church in Glennonville, Missouri. And thus began Amelia Margaret’s intimate journey with her loving God.
Just two-and-one-half years later, Amelia got a baby-sister, Teresa, and that generation of the Stenger family was complete – a balanced collection of a mom and dad with four daughters – Genevieve (Ginny), Mary, Amelia, Teresa – and four sons – John, Bernard (Ben), Adolph (Al), and Francis (Frank). And to Mary, Frank, and John – and so many nieces and nephews and their children (and grandchildren) – we Ursulines of Mount Saint Joseph offer our love, our prayers, and our shared sorrow as you grieve your sister Amelia’s loss and celebrate her life.
Amelia and her siblings grew up on the family farm near Glennonville in the bootheel of Missouri. She remembered that her dad, a creative blacksmith and farmer, “used to call me his Lucky Seven” and that “he could take any old thing and make it into something else – useful, beautiful, and new.” While growing up on the farm, Amelia learned about the land, how to grow her own food, and how to can it. And of her mom, Amelia recalled, “She was a wonderful, sensitive, caring woman. She could can any kind of fruit or vegetable and could sew anything. . . and did. She taught me how to quilt.”
Dunklin County, Missouri, was rich with a German-Catholic heritage; everything was in the context of “Church” and family lives were centered around the Church. School for the Stenger family – Saint Teresa Catholic School – was also centered on the Church. Amelia would say, “My family and I worked with nuns all through school,” and Ursulines were integral to her education. Amelia remembered that when she was in the second grade, “Sister Jean Gertrude let me teach some first graders. I really loved that. It made me want to become a teacher.” And from then on, her favorite playtime activity was pretending to be a Sister and a teacher; and perhaps even then learning to be just that.
In 1956, Amelia Margaret made her First Communion and in 1957 passed another milestone in her life’s faith journey, as at nine years old, she was confirmed at Saint Teresa’s Church. In just four short years more she would encounter yet another milestone. Her elementary education years at Saint Teresa School were over and, at the age of thirteen, she – in her own words – “just got into a car, left home, and came to Mount Saint Joseph Academy.” And her life changed.
Sister Amelia would later write: “I came from a poor family, when I got to the Mount, I loved every minute that I was here because I had all the music and books and indoor bathrooms [that]. . . I didn’t have when I was on the farm. [At the Mount] I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. . . the Sisters. . . had everything that I needed to grow. Over the years I have thanked God every day that I had been able to come to the Mount and be here.” She noted as well the support she felt, naming “teachers who were a part of my growing years, Sister Francesca Hazel, Sister Marita, Sister Ruth Helen, and Sister Miriam. As a thirteen-year-old girl away from home, they took good care of me.” Amelia’s image of what it meant to be an Ursuline and an educator was deepening and maturing.
Amelia would say that, although she had been around Ursulines all her life, she did not “make the decision to enter the convent until I was a senior in high school. I probably thought about it before my senior year, and I am sure the seed was planted a long time before then.” Her family, however, said they had known all along that she would make this choice.
Amelia graduated from the Academy, May 27, 1967, and just three months later on September 2nd became a postulant with the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. One year later, she joined with her seven novitiate classmates – Sisters Claudia, Joel Marie, Mary Carolyn, Mary Jeanette, Carrie, Gene, and Margaret Ann – and became in her turn Sister Amelia. And to Sister Claudia and others who shared in that journey with Sister Amelia, we offer our love, our prayers, and condolences as you grieve your classmate’s loss and celebrate her life.
In 1970, as Sister Amelia prepared for her vows and for her first mission, she shared these thoughts that would shape her next fifty-five years of service:
“I want to dedicate my life to the work of Christ, His Church, and our Community. . . . Living a religious life in these times of renewal and change is a challenge. But I am willing to take that challenge with Christ’s love and help, and your prayers and encouragement.”
And Sister Amelia would say and reiterate in many ways throughout her years, “I know God has a purpose for me in life,” and “I am here because God wanted me to be,” and “Whenever I was asked to do something, God always seemed to be calling me to do just that.”
And so, in this light, Sister Amelia began her life’s work. When asked decades and countless attainments later, “What is your major accomplishment in life?” Sister Amelia answered without hesitation, “Being a teacher.” For Sister Amelia, her classroom was the world, and her students were anyone she encountered.
In 1971, while still taking classes at Brescia College, Sister Amelia began teaching 5th grade at Precious Blood Catholic School in Owensboro. She recalled, “I used my first year of teaching for my student teaching and then finished my last classes during the next summer,” completing her degree in August, 1973. In a few years, she accepted the call to move to Immaculate Conception School in Earlington and also undertook administrative duties there. Then on to Christ the King School in Madisonville and Saint Joseph School in Bowling Green, honing her skills as principal and earning her Masters in Education from Eastern Kentucky University.
Yes, Sister Amelia was still teaching – only her students were both her pupils, the teachers, the parents and anyone whom she could invite and encourage to support the cause of Catholic education. This sense of expanding the mission of Ursuline education beyond the confines of the school and recruiting teams of others to help achieve this goal would accompany Sister Amelia throughout her ministries. And her ministries were rich and challenging; she would say of them, “I have seen great growth. . . and I have seen some very difficult times.”
In the early 1980’s, Sister Amelia completed her Master of Arts in Elementary Administration through the College of Saint Thomas, in Minnesota, and in 1984 became the first woman to serve as superintendent of the Catholic Schools of the Diocese of Owensboro. In the 1990’s she would again become the first woman to assume the superintendency of the Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Louisville.
These were some challenging years, as Sister Amelia was asked to help guide schools through changing times – through restructuring, through seeking accreditation, and responding to legislated state-wide education reform. But here again, she reached out, recruiting others to join the crusade to support Catholic (and Ursuline) education. She helped create the Kentucky Non-Public Schools Commission to strengthen private schools in the midst of the Kentucky Education Reform Act, and engaged with the National Council for Private School Accreditation accessing its needed resources for her schools.
This same determination to engage as many people as possible in the Ursuline mission was the hallmark of her years as Director of the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center and later as Development Director for the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. This spirit of evangelization also shaped her years as the Congregational Leader for the Ursuline Sisters.
Sister Amelia had that rare gift to be able to imagine a project as a possibility, to pitch that idea to seemingly unrelated groups of people, and to bring them all on board – gathering their ideas, convincing them that they had the ability or the desire to spend the time and effort necessary to help bring the project to completion. Sometimes it did not work, but often it did . . . For example, there were:
- Environmental education programs at the Center
- Commemorative and memorial and T-shirt quilts sewn for celebrations
- GREENing Western Kentucky conferences and their outreach
- The Quilt Club
- Agriculture education programs on the farm
- The Memory Meditation Garden
- Quilt Bingo
- The Rosary Walk, and
- The Flatboat – Angela’s Ark and all its ancillary programs
But behind this all was Sister Amelia’s knowledge that “God has a purpose for me in life,” and that she belonged at Mount Saint Joseph, and had been both “blessed over the years” and given the gift to bless others.
For Sister Amelia, it was not enough simply to be hospitable, she wanted each person she encountered to feel the same intensity of God’s love that she knew was the Ursuline charge. In essence, she believed:
- If someone needed shelter, the room should not just be clean, but filled with flowers and fruit in welcome.
- If someone was timid, you gave them the chance for success.
- If you could help, you should.
- If someone should be thanked, homemade goodies, personally delivered, overrode even the most beautiful “thank you” card.
- That you could and should inspire others to help, to teach, to care.
But this is all short of the mark. Sister Amelia wrote recently, “I have had many wonderful opportunities because of the prayers, support and education I received from [my community at Mount Saint Joseph]. What I have – what I am – is what you have given me.” And she was
A teacher
A creative quilter
An evangelist
A recycler
A gifted cantor
A treat maker and a treat deliverer
A master gardener
An idea generator
A leader
An honorary Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture
A Missouri farm girl
An Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph
And a child of God.
Her life was stitched together in prayer and the love of God, a love which called her forth to accomplish many tasks. She would say: “I still have a hard time praying while I sit still. I feel closer to God when I am out in the garden touching the soil amid the beauty of God’s Earth.” And now in this Octave of Easter, as the Earth’s bounty is surrounding us with new growth, the fragrances of Spring, and nature’s fresh full palette of blossom’s colors, we surrender Sister Amelia to God’s loving arms.
In closing, then, I share with you a memorial sent to us from the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville:
As thread in a quilt colors our world, so did the life of Sister Amelia Stenger.
She was a strong woman of great faith and love for all of God’s creation.
May memories of her be as numerous as stitches on a quilt and may they always gladden your hearts and lift your spirits high.
And may she forever enjoy new life in the garden of heaven.
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