{"id":28978,"date":"2026-06-30T22:38:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/pope-promotes-italian-nun-to-top-migrant-role-in-his-first-major-appointment-of-a-woman-to-holy-see\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T22:38:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:08:38","slug":"pope-promotes-italian-nun-to-top-migrant-role-in-his-first-major-appointment-of-a-woman-to-holy-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/pope-promotes-italian-nun-to-top-migrant-role-in-his-first-major-appointment-of-a-woman-to-holy-see\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope promotes Italian nun to top migrant role in his first major appointment of a woman to Holy See"},"content":{"rendered":"


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ROME (AP) — <\/span>Pope Leo XIV<\/a><\/span> <\/span>on Tuesday made his first major appointment of a woman to the Holy See hierarchy, promoting Italian Sister Alessandra Smerilli to head the Vatican office responsible for migrants, the environment and development.<\/p>\n

Smerilli, an economist, is currently the No. 2 in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. As prefect, she replaces the retiring Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny, who turns 80 this month.<\/p>\n

With the appointment of Smerilli, Leo appears to be following suit of his predecessor, <\/span>Pope Francis, who<\/a><\/span> <\/span>made a point of promoting women to top-level management positions within the Holy See as part of his response to calls by women for greater decision-making roles in the church.<\/p>\n

But Leo too is following Francis’ lead by simultaneously naming Cardinal Fabio Baggio as a “pro-prefect” of the office, where he is currently undersecretary.<\/p>\n

The dual nominations recognize that sometimes the role of a Vatican department head requires being an ordained priest and cardinal.<\/p>\n

Baggio was also given the mandate to head up the Vatican’s Borgo Laudato Si environmental educational center, at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church reserves the priesthood for men, and women have long complained of a second-class status despite carrying out the lion’s share of the church’s work running schools, hospitals and passing the faith onto younger generations.<\/p>\n

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s <\/span>collaboration<\/a><\/span> <\/span>with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.<\/p>\n


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ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday made his first major appointment of a woman to the Holy See hierarchy, promoting Italian Sister Alessandra Smerilli to head the Vatican office responsible for migrants, the environment and development. Smerilli, an economist, is currently the No. 2 in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. As prefect, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}