The Pope Has Decreed That Any Baptized Lay Catholic, Including Women, Can Head Departments In The Vatican.

VATICAN, March 19 – Pope Francis on Saturday introduced a landmark change allowing any baptized lay Catholic, male or female, to lead most departments under a new constitution for the Vatican’s central administration.

For centuries, departments were headed by male clerics, usually cardinals or bishops.

The drafting of a new 54-page constitution called Praedicate Evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”) took more than nine years. It was issued on the ninth anniversary of the election of Pope Francis in 2013 and will come into effect on June 5, replacing the document issued in 1988 by Pope John Paul II.

Its preamble states: “The pope, bishops and other ordained ministers are not the only preachers in the Church”, adding that laity and laity “should play the role of government and be responsible” in the Curia.

The principles section of the constitution states that “any believer may head a dicastery (a branch of the curia) or body” if the Pope decides they are qualified and appoint them.

The 1988 constitution stated that departments, with few exceptions, should be headed by a cardinal or bishop, assisted by a secretary, experts, and administrators.

The new constitution makes no distinction between laymen and laywomen, although the appointment of a layman depended on the department’s “special competence, power of government and function”.

The common constitution allows departments to have their own internal constitutions.

At least two of them, the chair of bishops and the chair of the clergy, will continue to be headed by men, since only men can be priests in the Catholic Church, experts say.

According to experts, the department of consecrated life, which is responsible for the religious order, could presumably be headed by a nun. Now it is headed by a cardinal.

In an interview with Reuters in 2018, the pope revealed that he had put a woman on the shortlist for the head of the Vatican’s economic department, but she was unable to take the job for personal reasons.

The new constitution stated that the role of lay Catholics in leadership roles in the curia was “essential” because of their familiarity with family life and “social reality”.

Last year, for the first time, Francis appointed a woman to the second position as governor of the Vatican, making Sister Raffaella Petrini the highest-ranking woman in the smallest state in the world.

Also last year, he appointed an Italian nun, Sister Alessandra Smerilli, to the temporary position of secretary of the Vatican’s development department, which deals with issues of justice and peace.

In addition, Francis appointed Nathalie Beccard, a Frenchwoman from the Missionary Sisters Xavier, as assistant secretary of the Synod of Bishops, a department that prepares large gatherings of the world’s bishops every few years.

Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Christina Fincher and Jason Neely

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