Susan Varah was always the more conventional half of an ecclesiastical partnership that had lasted for more than fifty years. Even while her husband was cheerfully marrying divorced couples at his city church of St Stephen, Walbrook, she was upholding the Mothers' Union's then stern rule against admitting divorced wives to membership.

Later, in 1974, she was to be instrumental in bringing about the rule-change that softened the attitude of the Mothers' Union to re-marriage and also abolished the absurd, Pauline requirement compelling MU members always to wear hats when attending meetings of the Central Council.

More than 35 years of her life were devoted to the service of the Anglican Church's principal women's organisation, where her appetite for committee work was legendary. Even after she ceased to be central, meaning international, president in 1976 she continued to chair the Overseas Committee of the Mothers' Union for a further five-year period. She visited projects and branches as far afield as Bangladesh and Burma, Malawi and the South Pacific. She only finally retired from active service in the Mothers' Union in her 66th year. She had been appointed OBE on her retirement from the central presidency in 1976.

It was probably just as well that Susan Varah had a consuming interest of her own for her husband, as he freely concedes in his autobiography, Before I Die Again, published last year, always tended to be obsessional about his own activities, particularly after he founded the Samaritans in 1953. (The most candid confession in the book is probably his revelation that he even overlooked the date of his own golden wedding.)

Doris Susan Whanslaw met Chad Varah before the second world war when he became curate of St Mary the Virgin, Putney, where she, though only 22, was secretary of the Parochial Church Council. They were married there in 1940 and moved to Barrow-in-Furness soon afterwards.

It was when her husband was given his first benefice, Holy Trinity, Blackburn, that Susan Varah became active in the Mothers' Union. She continued her work when they returned to London, where Chad Varah was a vicar in Clapham. When he was given a city living in 1953 she discovered that there were no resident parishioners to be looked after so she continued her own work in Southwark, becoming Southwark diocesan MU president in 1956. This was all in addition to bringing up five children, three of whom were triplets.

As well as opening up the Mothers' Union to divorcees, Susan Varah pioneered sex education for schoolgirls at the organisation's Westminster headquarters. She also set up a nationwide scheme for young members to take care of single women having babies in hospital. She was thus by no means illiberal, though her views were probably more conservative then her husband's. Certainly, if it has never been easy to imagine Chad Varah as a bishop, there was never any conceivable difficulty in conjuring up a vision of Susan Varah as the chatelaine of an episcopal palace.

She is survived by her husband, four sons and one daughter.

Susan Varah, OBE, central president of the worldwide Mothers' Union, 1970-76, and wife of the founder of the Samaritans, died yesterday aged 76. She was born on October 29, 1916