The first lay woman to be appointed chancellor of a diocese retired this week, after 27 years in the position. The chancellor is the highest “ecclesial” or decision-making office a layperson can hold in the church and is often ranked second or third in authority after the bishop in a diocese. This position was not open to laypersons until the revised Code of Canon Law was issued in 1983 and
Mary Jo Tully, retiring chancellor of Portland in Oregon, became the first woman chancellor in 1989.
By 1993 some 15 percent of the chancellors in U.S. dioceses were women. Ten years later, about a quarter of them were women – about equally distributed between women religious and other laywomen, many of them with a degree in either civil or canon law.
Today, more than three in ten diocesan chancellors are women but fewer of them are women religious. Among the larger dioceses with women chancellors are the Archdioceses of Los Angeles, Washington, and San Antonio as well as the Dioceses of San Bernardino, Dallas, Fresno, and Sacramento. As shown below there are no discernible regional patterns. This is increasingly common across the United States.
The research and content for this post are from CARA Senior Research Associate
Mary Gautier. Dr. Gautier is also the Editor of
The CARA Report (...you should be reading it!).
Photo of Chancellor Tully from the Catholic Sentinel
