Tinamarie Stolz’s office is a reflection of her persona and spirit.
“Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly” is printed in black lettering on a white pillow propped up on one of two grey checkered armchairs in Stolz’s third floor office in the Wolfington Center for Ministry, Faith, and Service. Posters of Catholic saints, a world map and religious quotes adorn the walls. Prayer flags from El Paso hang from the ceiling just in front of three skinny green windows.
When she is sitting at her desk, Stolz can peer through these windows and see the front of the Chapel of St. Joseph, illuminated by the early morning sunlight.
Stolz, M.A. ’24, has been St. Joe’s assistant director of Campus Ministry since May of 2024. She helps manage retreats such as Ignite, Spark and the Winter Immersion Program, an annual service program run in conjunction with community partners at multiple locations around the world. Additionally, Stolz serves as a campus minister and a spiritual adviser, doing, in her words, “whatever’s needed.”
Finding her gifts
Born into a Catholic family in Rockland County, New York, Stolz grew up entrenched in faith and service. Her father is a social worker for the Department of Veteran Affairs in New York, and her mother is a retired kindergarten teacher. Stolz said she sometimes feels like she is the quintessential product of her parents’ occupations. As a teenager, Stolz got involved in St. Peter’s Church’s youth group and food pantry. One year, they did a Thanksgiving food basket drive, delivering baskets to people’s homes. Here, she was first introduced to the concept of service.
“I remember knocking on the door and this kid from my youth group answering it,” Stolz said. “I had never thought that someone I knew could also be impacted by something like hunger.”
In retrospect, Stolz said this experience was a moment of realization and made her first question what it meant “to be in community with people who are
experiencing these things.”
Because she wanted to be a healer, Stolz enrolled in an undergraduate degree in physical therapy at the College of St. Rose. But the required math and science courses derailed those plans. At the height of her struggles with precalculus, she met with her math professor, who eventually said to her, “Tinamarie, these are not your gifts.”
Her gifts, as she eventually realized, were in communications. Stolz graduated as a communication and media studies major in 2014. Still, she was lost, unsure of where to go from there.
A campus minister at the College of St. Rose advised her to look into post-graduate service. Despite her parents’ protests, Stolz moved to Detroit to work for Christ the King Service Corps. Stolz said their philosophy was “living and working in the same community” as those they were serving.
Developing her approach to faith and justice
Stolz’s time in Detroit changed her completely.
“It was the best year of my life,” Stolz said. “It was so, so special, and it was hard at times, but it taught me a lot of what I needed to know going forward. It changed the course of my life. I’d go so far as to say it saved me. I don’t think anybody before that would have been like, ‘She’s a bad person,’ but it showed me who I’m actually called to be.”
It was in Detroit that the foundation of faith and justice was laid for Stolz. Inspired by what she had experienced there, she went to graduate school and earned her masters in theological studies at the University of Dayton in 2017.
“That was important because it gave me the theological language and the theological framework to articulate what happened to me during my service year,” Stolz said.
Stolz further attributed her approach to faith and justice to an internship with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie in the summer of 2017. It was with the Sisters that she got arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience when protesting for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which gives people who were brought to the U.S. as children authorization to work and protection from deportation.
Sister Anne McCarthy trained Stolz in nonviolence before the protests, Stolz said. McCarthy took holy water from St. Brigid of Kildare and St. Walburga — who she proclaimed as healers — and placed it on Stolz’ throat, hands and feet. Stolz recalled McCarthy saying that those willing to be arrested were healers, too.
“[This] altered my brain chemistry,” Stolz said. “The work of justice is healing work, going back to what I always felt called to do in physical therapy. But, that wasn’t what God was saying how to do it.”
When Stolz was arrested and detained for five hours, she remembered a DACA recipient she had met shortly before. She thought about the task ahead of her and realized she was doing this for that recipient.
“I thought about her and the importance of community and everyone taking their slice of the pie,” Stolz said. “That was a slice of the pie that was unsafe for her to take. But for me as a white U.S. citizen? I mean, yeah, there’s always risk, but it’s a risk that I could take.”
Bringing her passion to Hawk Hill
After her three-month internship, Stolz stumbled across St. Joe’s, where a position had just opened up. She was hired as a Campus Minister and was to be in charge of various retreats and programs in Campus Ministry, specifically WIP. When she was hired, Stolz said she had little knowledge of the Jesuits. After looking into it, Stolz was intrigued.
“Now, I cannot imagine not having Ignatian spirituality,” Stolz said. “I cannot imagine my life without the Jesuit, handmade charism.”
Stolz graduated with her masters in writing studies from St. Joe’s this past winter. Stolz explained that she uses writing as a way to make sense of things that are bigger than her. She’s written for various faith-based publications about her work.
Stolz’ sense of justice seeps into all the work she does at St. Joe’s. She currently teaches a service learning course, Catholic Social Tradition, in which she pushes students to invest in service that is important to them. She has a plethora of partners for her students to work with.
Even outside Campus Ministry and the theology department, Stolz leads with intention. During covid-19, Stolz led a team of contact tracers. During this time, she learned how connected the people of St. Joe’s were with one another.
Jill Welsh, director of the Faith-Justice Institute, worked with her on this team. The pair has known each other since Stolz’s start at St. Joe’s.
“Tinamarie’s thoughtfulness and her faith and her ability to see the dignity in each person was so apparent throughout the entire time that we worked together as contact tracers,” Welsh said.
Stolz’ commitment to difficult work was not unnoticed by Welsh, who noted that Stolz ensured everyone on the team was supported. In one instance, Stolz worked throughout Christmas Eve, despite being off that day. She wouldn’t leave, Welsh said, until everyone else was done with their work.
“I was not surprised that she brought the same compassion and empathy that she brings to her work in Campus Ministry to the contact tracing work,” Welsh said. “What she taught me, though, was that that role could be looked at as a ministry as well.”
Stolz’ thoughtfulness and compassion also extends to her students. Stolz engages in Pastoral Care, a Christian welfare approach, where she meets with students one-on-one to talk through obstacles. Olga Lopez ’27 said whenever she has free time, she tries to meet with Stolz.
“She just wants to sit with you and talk about it, if you need it,” Lopez said. “If you just ever need to cry, anything, she’s always available.”
Lopez said she feels at peace when talking to Stolz. “It’s indescribable,” Lopez said.
‘Justice is healing work’
Under Stolz, WIP has made strides in campus-wide outreach and encourages participants to tackle relevant issues. Because of this, WIP is different each year. For example, this past February, WIP led an advocacy training event open to the campus community.
Stolz said the community partners of WIP have impacted her immensely. Her host mother in El Salvador, who she met in 2019 during one of her four trips there, has become a role model.
“When I’m sad or I feel like I can’t make a decision or I’m trying to have a moment where I need to be a leader, I’ll imagine that I’m at her kitchen table, and I’m like, ‘Okay, what would [she] do?’” Stolz said.
When Stolz was appealing to St. Joe’s for WIP to go to El Salvador, she was told she wasn’t going to get the necessary support. At the time, the State Department listed the country’s advisory status as a level three, urging citizens to reconsider traveling there. Stolz decided to pray, in Spanish, for intercession from St. Óscar Romero, who was a prelate in El Salvador. It worked.
It was then Stolz began to actively study the language. Learning Spanish helped Stolz communicate with the communities she works with directly, especially during WIP. Lopez said that Stolz doesn’t just do this work because it is her job but because it matters to her.
“She truly cares about WIP and Campus Ministry,” Lopez said. “With everything that’s going on currently in the world, she’s like, ‘We need WIP more than ever.’”
Justice feeds into all Stolz does. She’s a part of community organizing groups and advocacy networks, and is on the phone with local representatives daily.
Although Stolz may have never got to be a healer in the medicinal sense, she is a healer all the same.
“I think justice is healing work,” Stolz said. “Justice is healing, repairing systems. Sometimes that means throwing them out entirely. Sometimes that means building them from the ground up. Sometimes that means tweaking things so that people are not harmed and people are able to thrive.”
