Earlier this month, Pope Francis appointed Sister Simona Brambilla as the first woman to lead a Vatican department, making her the first female prefect — a senior official responsible for overseeing one of the dicasteries that make up the Roman Curia, the church's central administrative body — in the Catholic Church history.
Sr. Brambilla, an Italian-born member of the Consolata Missionaries religious order, will be the prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which oversees all the religious orders in the Church and other lay movements. The dicastery manages nearly 700,000 consecrated men and women, including about 600,000 nuns and around 129,000 priests who belong to religious orders.
She has served as the secretary for this dicastery since October 2023, and was also appointed to be a member of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod this past December.
Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has given many leadership roles to women, notably appointing Sister Nathalie Becquart, a member of the Xavière Missionary Sisters of Christ Jesus, as the first female undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops and the first woman with voting rights in the Synod. However, until Sr. Brambilla, no woman has been named prefect of a dicastery of the Holy See Curia. While establishing women in the Church’s diaconate remains inconclusive even after the Synod, Sr. Brambilla’s appointment appears to be a step in the direction of Pope Francis’ repeated desire for a “more incisive female presence in the Church.”
Statistics reflect progress in this direction. Data on the Holy See and Vatican City State show that from 2013 to 2023, the percentage of women employed in various positions in the Vatican increased from 19.2% to 23.4%.
On the same day, Pope Francis also named Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime, 65, as Sr. Brambilla’s co-prefect. The former rector general of the Salesians, Cardinal Artime’s appointment as pro-prefect is somewhat unusual; Vatican dicasteries are typically headed by a single leader, making the decision to appoint both a prefect and a pro-prefect unprecedented.
Sr. Simona Brambilla, 59, was born in Monza, Italy, a city near Milan. A member of the Consolata Missionaries, she has an extensive academic and pastoral background. She holds a nursing diploma and earned a licentiate and doctorate in psychology from the Gregorian Institute of Psychology. Her doctoral thesis explored evangelization and inculturation in Mozambique, where she worked earlier in her career in youth ministry.
In 2011, she was elected superior general of the Consolata Missionaries’ women’s branch and was re-elected in 2017, serving a total of 13 years. Her leadership focused on intercultural dialogue and global missionary outreach.
In 2024, while serving as secretary of the dicastery, Sr. Brambilla gave an interview to the Italian newspaper Avvenire. She described the appointment as part of a larger “synodal, open, inclusive, dialogical, and evangelical” path in the Church. While reflecting on Pope Francis’s remarks from a January 2024 homily, she pointed to the Holy Father’s leadership, noting that women’s increased participation is vital to the Church’s identity.
“The Church needs Mary in order to recover her own feminine face, to resemble more fully the woman, Virgin and Mother, who is her model and perfect image, to make space for women and to be ‘generative’ through a pastoral ministry marked by concern and care, patience and maternal courage,” Pope Francis said on Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God in 2024.
