 | BIOGRAPHY
Mary Ann Glendon
Ambassador, Holy See
Term of Appointment:
02/14/2008 to
present
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Mary Ann Glendon was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See on December 19, 2007. She was sworn in on February 14, 2008.
Prior to her appointment, Ambassador Glendon was the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In March 2004, Pope John Paul II named her president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, marking the first time a woman has headed one of the major pontifical academies.
She was also the first woman to lead a Vatican delegation to a major U.N. conference; in 1995, Pope John Paul appointed her head of the Vatican delegation to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing. Ambassador Glendon has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Policy. From 2001 to 2004, she served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, which advises the U.S. president.
In addition to teaching at Harvard, she has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University and the Legionaries of Christ’s Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum, both in Rome. Before her appointment to Harvard, she was a law professor at Boston College Law School. Earlier in her career, she was an associate at the Chicago law firm of Mayer, Brown and Platt.
Ambassador Glendon earned her bachelor’s degree, law degree and a master’s degree in comparative law at the University of Chicago. Her research has focused on European civil law, human rights, legal theory and comparative constitutional law.
In 2005, she received the National Humanities Medal. She is the author of "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," and several other books.
Ambassador Glendon is a native of Berkshire County, Massachusetts. She is married and has three daughters.
Released on February 14, 2008
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