Pope Francis broke one of the Vatican’s “stained-glass ceilings” on Monday, Jan. 6, by appointing a woman, Italian sister Simona Brambilla, M.C., as the prefect of a Vatican dicastery for the first time.
While most headlines made clear the historic nature of the appointment, the news also features some Vaticanese that may leave some readers scratching their heads: What is a prefect? A pro-prefect? A dicastery?
Here’s an explanation of the details.
What is Sister Brambilla’s new job?
Sister Brambilla, a member of the Consolata Missionaries religious order, has been appointed prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. This is the Vatican office that oversees religious orders—like the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits—and similar “institutes” in the church.
[Historic first: Pope Francis appoints woman as prefect of Vatican dicastery]
As prefect, she will be the top decision-maker in the office. This is a big deal because no woman has ever been a prefect in any Vatican office. The highest position a woman has held in a dicastery before this was secretary, which is the number-two role under the prefect. Only two women have held that role: Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A., the secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, a role she was named to in 2021 after a stint as interim secretary; and Sister Brambilla herself, who was made secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in 2023.
Several more women currently serve as undersecretaries, the number-three role in Vatican dicasteries.
What is a dicastery?
A dicastery is what the Vatican calls the different offices of the Roman Curia. Prominent dicasteries include the Dicastery for Evangelization and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Previously, the Vatican bureaucracy included congregations, dicasteries, pontifical councils and commissions; in his 2022 apostolic constitution “Praedicate Evangelium,” Pope Francis made almost all these separate offices dicasteries.
What is the Roman Curia?
The Vatican’s organization is split into two parts: the Roman Curia and the Vatican City-State. The City-State deals with practical things happening inside Vatican City: It is where you will find the event planning offices, the office in charge of St. Peter’s Basilica, the police, the Vatican Museums and so on. Women have generally risen to power more easily in the City-State than in the Curia, where ordination has traditionally been seen as more central to the exercise of official roles. For example, the head of the Vatican Museums is a woman.
The Roman Curia handles “churchy” matters like doctrine, clergy and religious life but also includes the Secretariat of State, which is in charge of the Vatican’s diplomats, or nuncios. When we speak about women holding top roles in Vatican dicasteries, we’re referring to top roles in the Roman Curia, specifically. (The City-State uses different names for its various offices.)
Why didn’t this happen before?
Before 2022, it would have been impossible for a woman to head a Vatican dicastery. That year, with “Praedicate Evangelium,” Pope Francis overhauled the governance of the Roman Curia. In addition to simplifying the naming of offices (making them all “dicasteries”), he changed the rules to allow people who were not ordained as priests or bishops to run Vatican offices, thus opening the top positions to women for the first time.
(The Dicastery for Communication, established in 2018, is an exception: It has been headed by the same lay man, journalist Paolo Ruffini, since its founding.)
Since “Praedicate Evangelium” came into effect, Vatican watchers have been waiting to see when the pope might appoint a lay prefect. As for why an appointment has taken two and a half years since the constitutional reform, one possibility could be internal resistance in the Vatican, which Pope Francis has said he faced when appointing women previously.
The appointment of Sister Brambilla might raise some eyebrows in the Vatican specifically because, for the first time, a cardinal will be reporting to her. Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, S.D.B., the former head of the Salesian order, will serve as pro-prefect under Sister Brambilla.
What is a pro-prefect?
“Pro-prefect” is a title that was previously used to describe a non-cardinal who headed a Vatican congregation, one of the types of offices that was simplified to “dicastery” in the 2022 Vatican reform. After that reform but before the appointment of Sister Brambilla, it was only used to describe the top two officials in the Dicastery for Evangelization, and it was used because Pope Francis himself is the prefect of that dicastery.
Its use in the case of Cardinal Artime is unusual. Some have speculated that the cardinal has been made a pro-prefect in case some canonical issues come up within the dicastery that require action by an ordained bishop. (While the powers of Holy Orders and governance are separate in the Curia constitution, they are still intertwined in many places in canon law.) It is possible the Vatican will provide further explanation of the role in the coming days.
What other Vatican offices could be headed by women in the future?
Following the 2022 constitutional reform, most analysts agreed that women could lead almost any Vatican office except for the Dicastery for the Clergy and the Dicastery for Bishops. (Interestingly, the pope did appoint women as members of the Dicastery for Bishops for the first time in 2022, giving them a say in what names are forwarded to the pope for consideration to become bishops.)
The Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which Sister Brambilla will head, has long been seen as one that could or should be run by a woman, since the majority of members of the orders or institutes of religious life around the world are women.
Likewise, most lay people in parishes are women, so the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life is often named among those that could be headed by a woman in the future. Just after the 2022 constitutional reform took effect, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the prefect of that dicastery, told America, “I believe I could be the last cleric in charge of this dicastery.”
