Italian nun Raffaella Petrini to head Vatican Governorate

Sister Raffaella Petrini. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News

Vatican City, Jan 21, 2025 / 16:30 pm (CNA).

In less than a month and a half, Pope Francis will install Franciscan nun Raffaella Petrini as head of the General Secretariat of the Government of the Vatican City State.

The change will take effect in March when Petrini, who currently serves as secretary in the same department, replaces Spanish Cardinal Fernando Vérgez, who will turn 80 in a month and a half.

The news was made public by the Holy Father during an interview on the Italian television program “Che Tempo Che Fa” (“What’s the Weather Like?”).

“We now have many women. For example, to select bishops on the commission there are three women selecting new bishops. The vice president of the Vatican Governorate, who will be governor in March, is a nun. In the Dicastery of the Economy, the vice president is a nun with two degrees … Women know how to manage things better than us,” he said.

Petrini was born in Rome on Jan. 15, 1969. She graduated with a degree in political science from the Guido Carli International University of Studies and obtained a doctorate from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, where she currently works as a professor. She joined the Vatican Curia as an official in the former Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

This appointment follows others the pontiff has made to increase the profile of women in leadership positions in the Catholic Church. Earlier this month, Pope Francis appointed the first woman to head a Vatican department, Sister Simona Brambilla, former superior general in Italy of the Consolata Missionaries.

Brambilla currently heads the dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life together with Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, who has been named pro-prefect.

In 2022, Pope Francis confirmed the nun Alessandra Smerilli as prefect and undersecretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, a position she shares with Cardinal Michael Czerny. Both had already been interim directors of this body since Jan. 1 following the departure of Cardinal Peter Turkson.

Since 2016 the Vatican Museums have also been headed by a woman, Barbara Jatta, and in 2015 the pope appointed Mariella Enoc head of the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.