Pope Francis has named for the first time a woman, Sister Simona Brambilla, to head a dicastery of the Roman Curia, continuing to add to the number of women in leadership roles at the Vatican, a hallmark of his pontificate.
The 59-year-old Brambilla, a member and former superior general of the Consolata Missio-nary Sisters, has been secretary of the Vatican department for religious and consecrated life since October 2023.
Sr Brambilla will lead the Dicastery for Institutes of Con-secrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life together with Card-inal Ángel Fernández Artime, who was named pro-prefect on Jan. 6. A Spaniard, the 64-year-old Fernández concluded a decade as rector major of the Salesians last year. The appointment of an ordained bishop as pro-prefect of the same dicastery was necessary because Church law calls for ordi-nation in order to carry out certain governing powers.
Brambilla, who trained as a nurse before entering religious life, was a missionary in Mozam-bique in the late 1990s. She then returned to Italy, where, with her advanced degree in psychology, she taught at the Pontifical Gre-gorian University in its Institute of Psychology. She was head of the institute of Consolata Missio-nary Sisters from 2011 until May 2023.
Brambilla joins several other religious and non-religious lay-women appointed by Pope Francis to important posts in the Vatican, including Franciscan Sister Ra-ffaella Petrini, the first woman to hold the second-ranking post in the government of the Vatican City State.