Pope appoints Consolata sister as first female dicastery prefect

The 2022 apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium made it possible for lay women and men to lead a dicastery as prefect, a role previously reserved to bishops.

Pope Francis appointed Sr Simona Brambilla MC the prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the first woman to hold such an office in the curia.

Sr Brambilla, 59, an Italian-born Consolata Missionary, qualified as a nurse in 1986 before joining the order two years later, and worked in Mozambique after taking her perpetual vows in 1999. She was superior general of the Consolata Missionaries from 2011 to 2023, when she was appointed secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Alongside her appointment on Monday, the Pope also named Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime SDB, a member of the dicastery and Rector Major of the Salesians until August last year, as pro-prefect – a post hitherto only employed in Vatican departments nominally headed by the pontiff, historically the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and today the Dicastery for Evangelisation.

The 2022 apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium made it possible for lay women and men to lead a dicastery as prefect, a role previously reserved to bishops, advancing the separation of governance in the Church from sacramental ordination.

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Women have taken several senior roles in the Vatican during Pope Francis’ pontificate, including as secretaries, deputies and under-secretaries of major departments. The Pope has appointed two women to leadership positions: Barbara Jatta as Director of the Vatican Museums in 2016, and Sr Raffaella Petrini FSE as Secretary General of the Governorate of the Vatican City State in 2022, the latter a role historically held by a bishop.

Brambilla was among the first seven women appointed to her dicastery in 2019 and was its first female secretary, working under her predecessor Cardinal João Braz de Aviz who was prefect from 2011 until his retirement this year aged 77.

She was a papal delegate to both Rome assemblies of the Synod on Synodality, and in December last year was appointed a member of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, alongside the Argentine laywoman María Lía Zervino.

The under-secretary of the Synod of Bishops Sr Nathalie Becquart XMCJ welcomed Brambilla’s appointment as prefect of her dicastery as “wonderful news”.

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