'A court with many lords and few ladies': Mary Ann Glendon on her experiences of sexism in the Vatican

Most readers familiar with Glendon's name will associate her with her time as ambassador to the Holy See during the George W. Bush administration-a position that she held for just over a year-but her experience with the Vatican includes stints as a founding member and then president of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, an auditor to the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for America (held in 1997), and a member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. Glendon describes conducting months of interviews with Vatican Bank employees, laying out a map of power relationships, describing problems in the workplace culture, and making recommendations, only to have the body dissolved after it turned in its final report. Over the course of the book, she evolves from a passionate civil rights advocate raised Catholic in a social-justice-focused congregationalist community to a professor and diplomat with a reputation for political conservatism, even refusing the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal in 2009 when the university decided to give an honorary degree to Barack Obama at the same event.