Pope Francis’ historic appointments: 4 women helping to lead the Vatican

 

CNA Staff, Apr 25, 2025 / 11:45 am (CNA).

Throughout his papacy, Francis took steps to appoint and integrate women into leadership roles in the Vatican. From the time he took office in 2013, the number of female employees working in the Vatican increased from about 850 at the beginning of Francis’ papacy to nearly 1,200 in 2023, according to a report by Vatican News.

As of 2023, more than 1 in 4 employees of the Roman Curia — the group of bureaus that support the pope in governing the Church — are women.

While increasing the opportunities for women in the Church, Pope Francis consistently maintained the Catholic teaching that the priesthood is reserved for men. Francis said the Church needed to preserve its masculine “Petrine principle” in regards to ministry as well as its feminine, spousal nature, which he called the “Marian principle.” Notably, Francis believed women were highly capable of participating directly in the Church, especially in an “administrative way.” He said women make better managers than men and “have been running things since the Garden of Eden.”

In a 2022 interview, Francis spoke of the dignity of women as reflecting the spousal, feminine nature of the Church.

“A Church with only the Petrine principle would be a Church that one would think is reduced to its ministerial dimension, nothing else,” he said. “But the Church is more than a ministry. It is the whole people of God. The Church is woman. The Church is a spouse. Therefore, the dignity of women is mirrored in this way.”

In March 2022, the pope established in Praedicate Evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”) that any member of the faithful could be eligible to lead a Vatican dicastery.

Women became voting members in a 2023 synod for the first time in the Church’s history. The pope also opened to women “full membership” roles in the Vatican dicasteries — previously reserved for cardinals and bishops. In January, Pope Francis marked another milestone in his pontificate by appointing Sister Simona Brambilla, the first-ever woman to head a Vatican dicastery — the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

As the Church reflects on Francis’ legacy and the confidence he placed in women to help lead the Church, CNA took a closer look at four religious sisters appointed to some of the highest-ranking leadership roles in the Vatican.

First-ever woman to lead a dicastery

In January, Sister Simona Brambilla became the first woman to head a Vatican dicastery.

As prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, she  oversees about 700,000 religious men and women throughout the world.

Brambilla, 60, is a member of the Consolata Missionaries religious order and served as superior general of the order for more than a decade. She was a missionary sister in Mozambique in the late 1990s and as a professional nurse taught at the Pontifical Gregorian University in its Institute of Psychology.

Pope Francis appointed Brambilla in December 2024 as a member of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, which helps prepare the ordinary general assembly of the Synod of Bishops. In July 2019, she — alongside six other women — became the first female members of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. She later became secretary of the dicastery.

When asked about her appointment as secretary in a 2024 interview, Brambilla said that for peace to grow, it “needs the fertility of a primordial soil: the healthy, good, trusting, respectful, reverent, tender, and vital relationship between man and woman.”

“A bit as it must have been at the beginning of time, in that garden in which God loved to walk in the breeze of the day, looking for the man and the woman, his blessed image,” Brambilla said.

Brambilla works with a cardinal who serves as pro-prefect, an unprecedented structure in the Holy See. Church law calls for ordination to carry out certain governing powers.

Pope Francis made it possible for laypeople including women to lead a dicastery — a role previously reserved for cardinals and archbishops — in the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium in 2022.

Vatican City’s first female governor

At the beginning of 2025, Pope Francis appointed Franciscan religious sister Raffaella Petrini as president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State and governor of Vatican City State, making her the first woman to ever hold the position.

Petrini served as secretary of both institutions since November 2021 — a second-ranking role in which she oversaw administrative offices, the police department, museums, and other services in Vatican City.

In her new role, Petrini reports directly to the pope and manages the Vatican budget and finance. As president of the Governorate of Vatican City, she runs the executive body of the papal city and leads the pontifical commission. She is the legislative authority of the city state. The governorate encompasses security and public order, health, economic issues, and infrastructure as well as the Vatican Museums and the Pontifical Swiss Guard.

Petrini, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, replaced Cardinal Fernando Vérgez in the role beginning on March 1.

Petrini, 56, is a professor with both academic and administrative experience. She was born in Rome on Jan. 15, 1969, and graduated with a degree in political science from the Guido Carli International University of Studies. She has a doctorate from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in social sciences, where she has taught economics and the sociology of economic processes.

From 2005 to 2021, Petrini worked at the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which was responsible for missionary work.

Pope Francis announced Petrini’s appointment in January during an interview, where he said: “Women know how to manage things better than us” and shared how “we now have many women” in leadership roles in the Vatican.

Pioneering woman in key social development role

In August 2021, Pope Francis appointed Italian economist and Catholic religious sister Alessandra Smerilli to a second-ranking position in the Vatican’s social development office — one of the highest posts ever held by a woman at the Holy See.

Smerilli, a Salesian Sister of Don Bosco, was appointed “ad interim” secretary of the Vatican’s social development office, the dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

The office helps promote Catholic social teaching around the world by addressing various social justice issues including human rights, the safeguarding of creation, human trafficking, and other charitable works.

The 50-year-old Salesian sister is an economist and professor. She has been an undersecretary at the human development dicastery since March 24, 2021, and was one of the principal organizers of the 2020 Economy of Francesco event.

When asked in 2024 by Angelus News about women in leadership in the Church, Smerilli said: “We need both men and women in order to have a more complete picture and a different perspective on the reality we face.”

Since 2019, Smerilli has also served as a councilor of the Vatican City State and a consultant to the secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. In spring 2020, she was asked to coordinate the economic task force of the Vatican COVID-19 Commission.

Forbes’ ‘most influential religious sister’

French religious sister Nathalie Becquart became the highest-ranking woman to ever work in the Synod of Bishops after Pope Francis appointed her to the second-ranking position in February 2021.

Becquart became the first woman undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, the advisory body to the pope himself. She went on to become the first woman to be a voting member in a Catholic synod, which is usually made up of bishops, priests, and some religious men, and Becquart was among many women who actively participated in the 2023 and 2024 Synod on Synodality.

Becquart holds a master’s degree in entrepreneurship from the HEC business school in Paris. Before she joined the Xavière Sisters at age 26 in 1995, she worked as a marketing consultant.

In 2024, the magazine featured Becquart in its Forbes Most Influential Women “50 over 50” list, calling her “the highest-ranking woman in the Vatican.”

Because of her extensive background in youth ministry, Becquart was involved in the preparation for the Synod of Bishops on young people, faith, and vocational discernment in 2018 and was general coordinator of a pre-synod meeting, taking part as an auditor.

Before her 2021 appointment, Becquart worked in the Synod of Bishops as a consultant to the general secretariat beginning in 2019. From 2012 to 2018, she oversaw the French bishops’ National Service for the Evangelization of Youth and for Vocations, a program designed to evangelize young people and cultivate a culture of vocations.