New York Bishop Assistant Mary Glasspool to retire in June

The Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool preached March 9, 2020, at the Episcopal Church Center’s Chapel of Christ the Lord. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service] After almost 45 years of ordained ministry, Assistant New York Bishop Mary Glasspool will retire this summer. Her last day will be June 30.

“Even at the most challenging of times, it is a huge privilege to be a bishop in this Church, and not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for it,” Glasspool wrote in a Feb. 7 letter to the diocese.

Glasspool made history in 2009 when she was elected bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles, becoming the second openly gay – and first lesbian – bishop in the Anglican Communion. In 2015, she moved to the Diocese of New York. Glasspool made history again in 2022 when she and her wife of 38 years, Becki Sander, were the first same-sex couple to attend the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England.

Glasspool was born on Staten Island when her father was the rector jointly of All Saints Church and St. Simon’s Church. She grew up in Goshen, New York, after her father became the rector of St. James Church.

In 1981, Glasspool earned her M.Div. from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was ordained a deacon. The following year, she was ordained a priest in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, where she served as assistant to the rector and later interim priest-in-charge of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Glasspool moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1984 to serve as rector of St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s Church. In 1992, she moved to the Diocese of Maryland to serve as rector of St. Margaret’s Church in Annapolis, where she remained until 2001, when she became the diocese’s canon to the bishop until 2009.

“The time has come when … I need to put aside the mitre and crozier, take a long break, and just waste some time with God,” Glasspool said in the letter. She also said she and Sander plan to stay in the New York area and spend the second half of 2025 traveling, resting and discerning “what God has in store for us in the next chapter of our lives.”

Glasspool said she will continue her normal duties in the coming months, including attending the House of Bishops’ gathering in March at Camp McDowell in Alabama. She will also assist with the transition in leadership over areas she oversees, including global mission, reparations, ecumenical and interreligious life, social concerns commissions, and college chaplains in the Diocese of New York. Glasspool said she’s working with Bishops Matthew F. Heyd and Allen K. Shin to “establish clear boundaries” that allow her to continue working with the Interfaith Center of New York, as bishop visitor of the Community of Saint John Baptist and with the Anglican Diocese of Cuernavaca in Mexico.

“It won’t be perfect, but I’ll do the very best I can to honor and support the ongoing life of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and my own life, as God has given it to me,” Glasspool said.

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York will host a diocesan celebration of Glasspool’s episcopate on May 31.

 “I’m so deeply grateful to so many people, but I’ll run the credits later,” Glasspool said. “For now I simply wanted to make public the evolving plan, and to give great thanks to our loving God who makes all things possible.”