(RNS) — In 2001, Harvard University law professor Mary Ann Glendon received an unusual phone call, asking if she’d like to spend three weeks giving a series of talks and workshops to Catholics across Australia.
It was “the last thing I was expecting,” said Glendon, who in 1995 became the first woman to head a Vatican delegation, at the United Nations’ World Conference on Women, and later served as the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
For each of the last 40 years, some of the brightest thinkers in the Catholic Church, like Glendon, received requests like this and have ultimately agreed to spend weeks or more in Australia delivering the Hélder Câmara Lecture. Among those who have made the trek are cardinals, including Basil Hume, Joseph Bernardin, Francis George, Oscar Rodriguez, Luis Antonio Tagle, Walter Kasper, Timothy Dolan, Jean-Marie Lustiger, Blase Cupich and Robert McElroy; journalists, such as Christopher Lamb and Austen Ivereigh; and theologians, such as Walter Brueggemann, Margaret Silf, the Rev. Greg Boyle and Sister Nathalie Becquart.
Since its inception, the lecture has been the vision of Marist brother Mark O’Connor. Originally from a suburb of …