Phyllis Zagano

Phyllis Zagano (born August 25, 1947) is an American author and academic. She has written and spoken on the role of women in the Catholic Church and advocates the ordination of women as deacons.

Zagano was born in Queens, New York. She graduated from Sacred Heart Academy in 1965. She has a BA from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York (1969); master's degrees in communications from Boston University (1970), in literature from Long Island University (1970), and in theology from St. John's University (1991); and a PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1979.

Zagano was program officer at the National Humanities Center from 1979-1980, and taught at Fordham University from 1980 to 1984. She was a researcher at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York from 1984 to 1986 and a Coolidge Fellow at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1987. She taught at Boston University from 1988 to 1999.

Since 2002, Zagano has taught at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, where she is senior research associate-in-residence and adjunct professor of religion. In 2005 she held a visiting professorship at the Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. In 2009, she was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Limerick's Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland, where she was a lecturer. In 2015 she was a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the Waterford institute of Technology, in Waterford, Ireland.

Zagano received the 2012 Catherine of Siena Award from Voice of the Faithful

She received the 2014 Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice from the Paulist Center of Boston.

In 2016, Pope Francis appointed Zagano to the Papal Study Commission on Women in the Diaconate. The Commission's first meeting was held November 25-26, 2016.

Her papers are archived by the Women and Leadership Archives of Loyola University Chicago.

Zagano's publications include:

• Woman to Woman: An Anthology of Women's Spiritualities Edited, with an introduction, 1993.
• On Prayer, 1994, 2001.
• Ita Ford: Missionary Martyr, 1996.
• The Exercise of the Primacy: Continuing the Dialogue. Co-edited, with an introduction and afterword, with Terrence W. Tilley, 1998.
• Things New and Old: Essays on the Theology of Elizabeth A. Johnson. Co-edited, with an introduction, with Terrence W. Tilley, 1999.
• Twentieth-Century Apostles: Christian Spirituality in Action, 1999.
• Holy Saturday: An Argument for the Restoration of the Female Diaconate in the Catholic Church, 2000; Catholic Press Association Book Award; 2002 College Theology Society Book Award.
• Dorothy Day. Edited, with an introduction, 2003.
• Called to Serve: A Spirituality for Deacons, 2004.
• The Dominican Tradition: Spirituality in History. Co-edited, with an introduction, with Thomas McGonigle, OP, 2006.
• Women & Catholicism: Gender, Communion, and Authority, 2011; Catholic Press Association Book Award in category B15, "Gender issues".
• Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future. With Gary Macy and William T. Ditewig, 2011.
• Women in Ministry: Emerging Questions about the Diaconate, 2012.
• Mysticism and the Spiritual Quest: A Crosscultural Anthology, 2013.
• Ordination of Women to the Diaconate in the Eastern Churches: Essays by Cipriano Vagaggini. Editor and translator, 2013.
• Sacred Silence: Daily Meditations for Lent, 2014.
• In the Image of Christ: Essays on Being Catholic and Female, Editor and translator, 2015.
• Women Deacons? Essays with Answers, 2016.
• The Light of the World: Daily Meditations for Advent, 2016.

• "Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D.". Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 14 August 2012. 
• "Book Review: The Dominican Tradition". Spiritualwoman.Net. Retrieved 23 July 2012. 
• "2012 Catholic Press Association Book Awards" (PDF). Book Award Winners. Retrieved 27 July 2012. 
• "It's Time to Ordain Women (Again)". Religion Dispatches. Retrieved 23 July 2012.