Dr. Mary Beth Yount

Mary Beth Yount, a theology professor at Neumann, will participate in a Vatican City colloquium, hosted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on November 17-19. Pope Francis will open the colloquium, which will focus on the Complementarity of Man and Woman in Marriage.

Held in cooperation with the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the colloquium is a global, interreligious meeting featuring representatives from 14 religious traditions and 23 countries. 

Sessions will be opened by the leadership of each of the cooperating Vatican offices, followed by the presentations and witness testimonies of leading religious figures and scholars. 

Each session will also premiere one of six short films treating men and women and marriage the world over. Each film features a variety of interviews with young and old, single and married, women and men, lay and religious, from many cultures, continents and religions. Topics range from the beauty of the union between the man and the woman, to the loss of confidence in marital permanence, to the cultural and economic woes that follow the disappearance of marriage. 

Dr. Yount is an internationally known theologian who has presented and written on topics related to the family, parenting, and education. She was recently appointed as director of content and programming for the World Meeting of Families, scheduled for Philadelphia in September 2015. As an assistant professor of pastoral and theological studies at Neumann, she has taught courses related to theological anthropology, marriage and the family, ethics, morality, ecclesiology, scripture, and Church history.

She and her husband, James, have been active in promoting healthy marriages and families in various communities and parishes for almost twenty years. They have four children who range in age from nine to two years old.