Mary Ann Glendon is professor emerita at Harvard University and a former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. She was President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences from 2003 to 2013 and a member of the Board of Supervisors of the Institute of Religious Works (Vatican Bank) from 2013 to 2018. Glendon led the Vatican delegation to the Beijing Women’s Rights conference in 1995, the first woman ever to lead a Vatican delegation, and has authored 13 books. Her latest, In the Court of Three Popes: An American Lawyer and Diplomat in the Last Absolute Monarchy of the West, was released last month. She was interviewed by Jayd Henricks via email.
WWNN: You have a storied career that is intertwined with so much contemporary Church history. Your work and life personify in many ways Vatican II’s call for the laity to engage the modern world. Fittingly, you end In the Courts of Three Popes with a reflection on the work of the laity in the life of the Church. You address this topic after a somewhat damning critique of the curial culture that you experienced in the Vatican that was not welcoming to lay leadership, especially women. The Church speaks beautifully about the role of the laity (and women) and yet too often falls short of living up to what she teaches. What can the laity do differently to help the Church live by what she teaches?
Glendon: The curial culture I describe in my book is a unique blend of influences that came together in the court of an absolute monarchy. That’s why Vaticanista John Allen once commented that “there’s a good case to be made that one’s odds of accomplishing something positive in the Catholic Church increase by a percentage point for every 25 miles or so of distance you put between yourself and Rome.” Catholic institutions elsewhere often do fail to live up to the Church’s great teachings on the laity and, I would add, on human work. But it’s my impression that most Church leaders around the world are increasingly aware of their need for lay assistance, especially in areas where the clergy are not trained. Lay people can enable the clergy to do more of what they are called to do, what they’ve been trained to do, and what they know how to do best. But in our busy modern societies, many people with much-needed skills never think of lending a hand to the Church. One of my hopes in writing the book was to encourage lay Catholics to consider how they might get involved.
WWNN: In your book, you emphasize the importance of understanding the internal government of the Holy See as a court, rather than just another bureaucracy. Can you explain how that is relevant to understanding the situation of the Holy See in the world of modern states?
Glendon: As a student of law and government, I have always been struck by how difficult it is for a tiny absolute monarchy to respond to the challenges of being a sovereign state in the modern world, especially where finances are concerned. After 24 years of service that took me into nearly every part of the Vatican, I am convinced that many of its current problems are due to the combination of two factors: First, an internal culture which blends many aspects of a medieval court with certain elements of the surrounding Italian culture from which it draws most of its personnel, including a somewhat relaxed attitude toward rules and regulations. (A common saying in Italian legal circles, for example, is “In Italy, everything is impossible and everything is possible.”) The second factor is that the various dicasteries and departments had very little oversight during the pontificates of Saint Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.
Both of those pontiffs will likely go down in history as among the greatest popes of all time, but even their most dedicated admirers say that neither’s strong point was administration. Their method of governing was to leave the internal affairs of the Vatican almost entirely in the hands of trusted subordinates. Sometimes that worked out well, but as the old saying goes, “when the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Over a period of many years, a number of departments became little fiefdoms. In the area of finances, the lax oversight attracted the attention of some very unsavory characters who saw vulnerabilities they could and did exploit.
When Pope Francis took office in 2013, it was a good sign that he acted quickly to address problems both in the area of finances and in the domain of internal administration. He created a commission, on which I served, with broad powers to investigate the Vatican Bank and to make recommendations on whether it should be reformed or closed. He called in an impressive outsider to Vatican culture, the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, to reform the entire financial system. And, showing his awareness of problems within Vatican culture, he initiated a series of curial reforms which culminated in 2022 in a new Constitution. He even gave a speech criticizing what he called “diseases of the Curia.”
Today, however, it’s clear that it takes more than a new set of rules to change a culture. Cardinal Pell was resisted at every turn by the then-powerful Cardinal Becciu, the Sostituto. Becciu has now been convicted of fraud and embezzlement in a Vatican Court, but the story isn’t over. An external auditor fired by Becciu is threatening to make public materials showing further corruption in the financial area, and the trials themselves have injured the Vatican’s reputation due to what many outside observers consider to be denials of due process.
WWNN: Providence is a mysterious thing, but it seems providence was very active in your life, bringing your many talents to the work of the Church. Is it fair to say providence guided your life and your career? How can a person of faith submit to the hand of providence?
Glendon: Human freedom is a mystery as well. I like to think that divine grace is always operating in the world, and that it’s up to us to discern and co-operate with it. But discernment is a lifelong challenge! It’s vital to cultivate habits of prayer.
WWNN: A good portion of your career has been dedicated to responding to threats to religious freedom. In your book you make the important distinction between the American model of religious freedom (protecting religion from interference from the state) versus the European model (protecting the state from interference from religion). Due to government mandates, the threats to religious freedom here in the United States continue to go in the wrong direction. What can the Church do to defend herself and her ministries?
Glendon: Church institutions need to do more to assert their rights. In recent years, religious liberty lawyers have won major victories. They have done much to protect space for the exercise of religious freedom, but it doesn’t help to clear space if the people and groups it was cleared for don’t use it. When a number of cities and states demanded that religious adoption and foster care agencies either forsake their commitments regarding marriage or cease providing services to needy children, many Catholic institutions around the country simply closed down their much-needed services. Fortunately Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia chose to fight and it won a unanimous Supreme Court victory. We need more of that spirit!
WWNN: You quote Vatican II and its call to the laity to take up the “noble art of politics.” Unfortunately, political discourse has soured dramatically since you left the diplomatic world. Everything now seems to be politicized within the context of extreme political positions. How do you recommend the Church engage the public square within this environment?
Glendon: I am more concerned about the responsibilities of the laity in the public square. Too many of us in secular societies tend to forget that we are the ones who have primary responsibility for evangelization of the secular sphere where we live and work. The bishops’ role is technically defined as “teaching, sanctifying and governing,” but, “The effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which one lives, is so much the duty and responsibility of the laity that it can never be performed adequately by others” (Apostolicam Actuositatem, 13).
WWNN: One of the things you stressed as ambassador was the generosity of the American people relative to humanitarian aid as well as the unmatched global network of the Catholic Church in distributing this aid. And yet there are strong forces trying to push the Church and people of faith out of private-public collaboration. Why is there so much fear about Church-State collaboration when it is so effective in serving those most in need?
Glendon: Much of the hostility to faith-based initiatives is purely political or ideological. But there is a principled reason for caution about Church-State collaboration, namely that “if you take the King’s shilling, you may be required to dance to the King’s tune.” That is why vouchers enabling parents to have free choice in education are preferable to direct government aid to religious schools. But the fact remains that health care and many other social services can often be delivered more efficiently, effectively and humanely through the mediating structures of civil society, than by government acting directly. As the Philadelphia foster care case shows, the risk of dancing to the King’s tune can be avoided by permitting religious providers to participate on an equal basis with other groups in government programs while retaining their religious identity.
Jayd Henricks is the president of Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal. He served at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for eleven years and holds a STL in systematic theology from the Dominican House of Studies.