Rev. Stanley R. Azaro, O.P.

Rev. Stanley Robert Azaro, O.P. died suddenly at the age of 76 on Friday, August 11, 2023, at Regina Cleri Residence in Providence, RI, where he had been living since 2018. He is survived by his brother, Denis Azaro.

He was born on May 13, 1947, in New Britain, CT, the son of Stanley William and Alda Margaret (Janusonis) Azaro. After public elementary school he attended St. Maurice Junior High School and graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in New Britain in 1965. He received professional training in violin and played with the Hartford Youth Symphony during high school.

Fr. Azaro studied Humanities in the pre-novitiate program at Providence College from 1965 to 1967, when he entered the Dominican novitiate at St. Joseph Priory in Somerset, Ohio. The novitiate then moved to St. Stephen Priory in Dover, MA, and Fr. Azaro made his First Profession there on August 4, 1968. He studied Philosophy, received his BA from St. Stephen’s College, and made his Solemn Profession on August 4, 1971. From 1971 to 1976, he studied Theology at the Dominican House of Studies, earned his Baccalaureate and Licentiate in Sacred Theology, and was ordained Priest at St. Dominic’s Church in Washington, DC, on May 28, 1975, by the Most Rev. Walter Sullivan, Bishop of Richmond.

In 1976, Fr. Azaro taught for a year at Ohio Dominican College in Columbus, OH, and then returned to the community of St. Stephen Priory to begin graduate studies in moral theology at Harvard University. He earned a Master of Theology in 1982 and moved to the rectory of St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge, MA, to assist in the Harvard campus ministry while working on his doctorate. From 1989 to 1995, he taught in the Religious Studies Department at Providence College and received his Doctor of Theology from Harvard with a dissertation on the ethical questions concerning the implementation of National Service policies.

In 1995, Fr. Azaro was recruited by the Master of the Order to assist with the restoration of Dominican life in the Baltic nations that were emerging from Communist rule. Having learned to speak the language of his Lithuanian grandparents from childhood, and being known as a gifted teacher, he devoted himself to organizing a novitiate for the Baltic General Vicariate of the Guardian Angels in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, and in 1997 was elected to serve one term as Vicar General.

Fr. Azaro returned to the United States in 2001 to resume teaching at Providence College, and from 2004 to 2006 took time off from teaching to accept a research fellowship at Yale Divinity School while being assigned to St. Mary Priory in New Haven, CT. In 2006 he received an appointment as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Dominican University in River Forest, IL, until 2010, when he took up residence at St. Vincent Ferrer Priory in New York City.

From 2010 until 2018, Fr. Azaro moved around to various communities, as chaplain to the Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of the Springs in Monroe, CT, parochial vicar at St. Rose Priory in Springfield, KY, and chaplain to the Dominican health care facility at Mohun Hall in Columbus, OH.

In 2018, Fr. Azaro requested and was granted permission to retire from active ministry and live at Regina Cleri Residence in Providence, RI.

His body will be received at the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary in the Priory of St. Thomas Aquinas on Thursday, August 17, 2023, at 4:00 p.m. The Office of the Dead will be prayed at 5:30 p.m. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated for him on Friday, August 18 at 11:00 a.m., with the prior provincial, Very Rev. Allen Moran, as celebrant and homilist. Burial will follow in the Dominican Friars’ section of St. Francis Cemetery in Pawtucket, RI.