Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist Raffaella Petrini, secretary-general of the office governing Vatican City State, will become president of the office on 1 March, the Vatican confirmed.
On an Italian television program in January, Pope Francis announced that Sr Petrini would succeed Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga. The Vatican announcement on 15 February said Sr Petrini’s appointment would take effect on 1 March, the day Cardinal Vérgez turns 80 and is required to step down.
The Vatican governor’s office oversees departments as diverse as the Vatican Museums, post office and police force, and has the largest number of employees of any Vatican office.
Appearing on talk show Che Tempo Che Fa on 19 January, Pope Francis said that the process of women being given leadership roles in the Roman Curia ‘is something that has gone slowly’, but would continue with Sr Petrini talking over the governor’s office.
Sr Petrini, 56, was born in Rome and made her perpetual vows with the US-based Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist in 2007.
The Vatican governor’s office oversees departments as diverse as the Vatican Museums, post office and police force, and has the largest number of employees of any Vatican office. In 2021, when Sr Petrini was named secretary-general of the office, she became the highest-ranking woman at the Vatican.
The position of secretary-general had previously been held by a priest, who was named a bishop shortly after becoming secretary-general. The president of the office has always been a cardinal or archbishop.
Sr Petrini holds a doctorate in social sciences from Rome’s Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas and a master’s degree in organisational behaviour from the Barney School of Business at the University of Hartford, Connecticut. Before being appointed secretary-general, she worked at what was then the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples and taught courses in sociology and economics at the University of St Thomas Aquinas.
Banner image: Pope Francis greets Sr Raffaella Petrini, an Italian member of the US-based Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, at the Vatican on 3 December 2015. The Pope has named Sr Petrini—already the highest-ranking woman at the Vatican—to be president of the office governing Vatican City State. (Photo: CNS/Vatican Media.)
