Bay Stater headed for Rome

(Photo by Tanit Sakakini)

(Check here for the complete article from Catholic News Service.)

President George W. Bush will nominate Mary Ann Glendon, a U.S. law professor and president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, as the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

The White House made the announcement late Nov. 5. The nomination is official when Bush sends it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will hold a hearing before sending the nomination to the full Senate for confirmation. As of Nov. 6, no hearing had been scheduled.

Glendon, a Catholic, said in a Nov. 6 statement that she hoped that her "background in international legal studies, together with my familiarity with Catholic social thought, will aid me in continuing the fruitful dialogue that presently exists between the United States and the Holy See" on a variety of issues.

Those issues include human rights, religious freedom, human trafficking, development and "the fight against hunger, disease and poverty," she said.
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Glendon is a law professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and has been a member of the social sciences academy since its founding in 1994.

In March 2004 Pope John Paul II named her president of the academy, marking the first time a woman has been named president of one of the major pontifical academies.

The social sciences academy focuses on issues related to the social sciences, economics, politics and law. Although autonomous, the academy works in consultation with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Glendon, 69, was the first woman named to head a Vatican delegation to a major U.N. conference; in 1995, Pope John Paul named her head of the Vatican delegation to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing.
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(Glendon) said the challenge religious and cultural leaders are facing is "motivating their followers to meet others on the plane of reason and mutual respect, while remaining true to themselves and their own beliefs."

Glendon is known as a strong defender of Catholic teaching while also working to expand the inclusion of women in the church.

Last December at a Rome conference on "Feminism and the Catholic Church," she said church teaching that women and men are equal, but not identical is a healthy corrective to the feminism of the late 20th century, which she said promoted a "unisex society."

But she also said the church "will continue to have difficulty explaining the exclusion of women from the priesthood" unless it demonstrates the seriousness of its belief that women and men are equal, but not identical, by providing examples of lay women and men and priests working together in real partnerships.

A native of Berkshire County, Mass., she lives with her husband, Edward R. Lev, in Chestnut Hill, Mass. They have three daughters.