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Pope Names First Woman to Senior Vatican Diplomatic Post
VATICAN CITY (Reuters)
Volume 34 Issue 1, 2 & 3 | Posted: March 30, 2020
Pope Francis named the first woman to hold a high-ranking post in the Secretariate of State, the male-dominated Vatican’s diplomatic and administrative nerve centre.
Italian laywoman Francesca Di Giovanni, 66, will assume a newly created post in a division known as the section for relations with states, where she takes the rank of undersecretary, one of two deputy foreign ministers.
The Roman Catholic Church allows only men to be ordained as priests and women have traditionally been consigned to the shadows of its administration.
However, women’s groups, including the International Union of Superiors General – an umbrella group of Catholic nuns – have long called on the Pope to appoint more females to senior jobs within the Vatican bureaucracy.
Pope Francis named the first woman to hold a high-ranking post in the Secretariate of State, the male-dominated Vatican’s diplomatic and administrative nerve centre.
Italian laywoman Francesca Di Giovanni, 66, will assume a newly created post in a division known as the section for relations with states, where she takes the rank of undersecretary, one of two deputy foreign ministers.
The Roman Catholic Church allows only men to be ordained as priests and women have traditionally been consigned to the shadows of its administration.
However, women’s groups, including the International Union of Superiors General – an umbrella group of Catholic nuns – have long called on the Pope to appoint more females to senior jobs within the Vatican bureaucracy.
Despite the Pope’s promises to appoint more women to decision-making jobs in the Vatican, Ms. De Giovanni joins only about half a dozen others holding them. The two most prominent are Barbara Jatta – head of Vatican Museums – and Cristiane Murray, deputy head of the press office.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters)