On Saturday, the Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool, the Annapolis priest who has served the last nine years as canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, is to be consecrated a bishop herself in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

She will be the second openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the first since the 2003 ordination of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire strained relations both within the Episcopal Church and between the Episcopal Church and the communion.

Baltimore Sun colleague Arthur Hirsch has produced a profile of Glasspool. It begins:

The Maryland priest at the center of a seismic tumult in the worldwide international Anglican Communion is slim and stands just over 5 feet, wears her gray hair cut short and greets visitors with a strong two-handed grasp. She's known to former parishioners and colleagues for emotional and insightful sermons, administrative skill, high energy — and for occasionally wearing a giant foam wedge of cheese on her head to honor her favorite NFL team.

The Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool, due to be consecrated today as bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, is known to the rest of the world by a phrase that would fit on a bumper sticker: "first openly lesbian bishop."

If the label seems handy, Glasspool said she hopes it soon outlives its usefulness.

"People who know me, the label will disappear. All I'm asking is an opportunity to get to know me," Glasspool, 56, said recently in an interview at the Baltimore headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. As canon to the bishops for the past nine years, she has served there as principal adviser to the leaders of the church.

She'll have more than enough meeting and greeting to do as she begins shuttling in the next few weeks between her home in Annapolis and Los Angeles, where she assumes her new post July 1. She'll work as bishop suffragan, or assistant, to Bishop J. Jon Bruno in a multilingual diocese of some 70,000 members in six counties, known for some of the most progressive parishes in the Episcopal Church.

"The Diocese of Los Angeles is tremendously exciting to me," said Glasspool, who spoke of the "very creative ways in which the church there does its mission and ministry," and the fact that on any given Sunday across the diocese, the liturgy is being celebrated in some 40 languages.