Pope Appoints Sister Simona Brambilla as First Woman to Head Major Vatican Office

An Italian nun, Sister Simona Brambilla was appointed by Pope Francis on Monday in Rome as the first woman to head a major Vatican office, to become prefect of the department responsible for all the Catholic Church's religious orders.

A major step in Francis’ aim to give women more leadership roles in governing the church is marked by the appointment. While women have been named to No. 2 spots in some Vatican offices, never before has a woman been named prefect of a dicastery or congregation of the Holy See Curia, the central governing organ of the Catholic Church.

Vatican Media confirmed the historic nature of Brambilla’s appointment, the report headlined “Sister Simona Brambilla is the first woman prefect in the Vatican.”

The office is one of the most important in the Vatican. Known officially as the Dicastery for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, it is responsible for every religious order, from the Jesuits and Franciscans to the Mercy nuns and smaller newer movements.

The appointment means that a woman is now responsible for the women who do much of the church's work — the world's 600,000 Catholic nuns — as well as the 129,000 Catholic priests who belong to religious orders.

Thomas Groome, a senior professor of theology and religious education at Boston College who has long called for the ordination of women priests said “It should be a woman. Long ago it should have been, but thank God. It’s a small step along the way but symbolically, it shows an openness and a new horizon or possibility.”

Groome noted that nothing theologically would now prevent Francis from naming Brambilla a cardinal, since cardinals don't technically have to be ordained priests. He added naming as a cardinal “would be automatic for the head of a dicastery if she was a man,”

But in an indication of the novelty of the appointment and that perhaps Francis was not ready to go that far, the pope simultaneously named as a co-leader, or “pro-prefect,” a cardinal: Ángel Fernández Artime, a Salesian.