Agnes Mary Mansour
Agnes Mary Mansour ( born April 10, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan, † December 17, 2004 in Farmington Hills, Michigan) was an American Roman Catholic theologian.
Life
Mansour came from a Lebanese Maronite immigrant family. She attended St. Charles High School in Detroit. Mansour studied medicine and chemistry at Mercy College where she graduated in 1953. She joined as a Roman Catholic nun in the Religious Order of the Sisters of Mercy. For further study, she went to Washington at the Catholic University of America, where she graduated in chemistry in 1958. Further studies of the biochemistry she graduated from Georgetown University. The American Council on Education program of the University of Kentucky, she learned Administrative Sciences.
In 1971 she was president of the University of Detroit Mercy. She taught as a high school teacher Roman Catholic theology at Michigan State University and Wayne State University.
In the 1970s she became politically active and a member of the Democratic Party. In 1982 she ran for the Democratic primary in Michigan, but lost narrowly to their competitors Sander M. Levin. The Edmund Casimir Szoka then archbishop in 1982 Detroit endorse the candidacy of Mansour for political office. After the 1982 elections the Democratic governor James Blanchard appointed her as Director of the Michigan Department of Human Services (DSS ), Michigan's largest federal administrative authority. With this appointment, she was responsible for public health care in the state of Michigan and was responsible, among other things, Medicare for the public funds in abortions.
In this responsibility, they got into an altercation with her Archbishop Edmund Casimir Szokam, who demanded of her a public rejection of abortion. In this dispute between her and the archbishop and anti-abortion, she was supported by her orders and to justify it based on the encyclical Ad Petri Cathedram.
Szokam subsequently demanded in a directive for the resignation of Mansour of its public ministry. There were demonstrations by hundreds of nuns of her order and some Roman Catholic priests against this action of the archbishop. The protests were supported by the U.S. organization National Coalition of American Nuns. Margaret Traxler, Roman Catholic nun of the School Sisters of Notre Dame criticized the Archbishop sharp. On March 8, 1983, she was proposed as a Senator of the Senate of Michigan. Theresa Kane, the religious head of the Religious Order of the Sisters of Mercy, was charged in a formal hearing by the Vatican in the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life to reprimand you and your religious because of their support of Mansour what they are as well as your deputy Emily George refused and continue to the support of Mansour's stance on abortion debate held fast. At that time, Mansour decided to leave your Order, to be free in their responsibilities as a director of the Michigan Health Organization ( DSS). After 30 years of membership, she left the Order in this dispute the Order.
Until 1987 it remained thereafter as Director at the lead tip of DSS. In 1984, she signed the Campaign A Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion, which appeared in the New York Times.
After 1987, she worked in Michigan in the Mercy Health Services Special Initiative to the Poor and founded the Poverty and Social Reform Institute ( PSRI ). In various organizations and companies she worked in the following years on the Supervisory Board, including PSRI, Sisters of Mercy Health Corporation, Women's Economic Club, Michigan Bell Telephone, National Bank of Detroit and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. In 2004, she died of complications from breast cancer.
Prizes and Awards (selection)
- Michigan Women's Hall of Fame, 1988