Pope Francis Names Six Women To Senior Vatican Jobs

By Francis X. Rocca

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis named six women to the body that oversees Vatican finances, making them the most senior female officials ever to serve at the Vatican.

Their appointment to the Vatican's 15-member Council for the Economy, which was previously all-male, is the biggest step so far by Pope Francis to carry out his promise to place more women in leadership roles in the Catholic Church. The change comes as the Vatican's longstanding financial problems have become especially acute on account of the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession.

The council's new members, announced by the Vatican on Thursday, include two women each from the U.K., Germany and Spain. Only one of the council's seven lay members will be a man. According to the council's statutes, a majority of eight members must be cardinals or bishops, who are always men.

Pope Francis established the council in February 2014 and named the original 15 members for a five-year term, although he often allows officials to serve beyond the end of their terms.

Until now, Pope Francis' most prominent appointment of a woman to a Vatican post has been that of Barbara Jatta, an Italian art historian who became director of the Vatican Museums, one of the world's pre-eminent art collections, in 2017.

"We must move forward without fear to include women in advisory positions, also in governance," Pope Francis told Vatican officials last November. "The place of women in the church is not just as functionaries...Women's advice is very important."

However, the pope has discouraged calls to ordain women as deacons, a lower rank of clergy than priests, dismissing the idea that ordination would give women greater status and participation in the church. In February, responding to bishops from Latin America's Amazon region who had expressed support for women deacons, Pope Francis wrote that women there should be given roles that "do not entail holy orders" but allow them to serve "in a way that reflects their womanhood."

The Council for the Economy's new members have backgrounds in finance, politics and academia. Ruth Kelly is a former U.K. member of Parliament and government minister. Eva Castillo Sanz is a former chairwoman and chief executive of Telefónica Europe. Leslie Jane Ferrar is a former treasurer to the Prince of Wales. Marija Kolak is president and CEO of Germany's association of cooperative banks. Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof is a law professor at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Maria Concepcion Osácar Garaicoechea is a founding partner of Azora Group, a Spanish real-estate investment firm.

The lone man among the new lay members is Alberto Minali, former CEO of Italy's Cattolica Assicurazioni insurance company.

Pope Francis also replaced six of the original eight cardinals on the council, leaving in place German Cardinal Reinhard Marx as the council's coordinator. Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, one of the pope's strongest supporters among U.S. bishops, will be the only American on the body.

The Council for the Economy is the highest authority, under the pope, over Vatican finances. It reviews budgets and balance sheets of all the offices of the Holy See, which consists of the central administration of the Catholic Church in Rome and the papal diplomatic network abroad, and of Vatican City State, the sovereign territory in Italy ruled by the pope.

The Holy See was already struggling with a soaring budget deficit, reaching about EUR70 million ($83 million) in 2018 on a budget of about EUR300 million, before the pandemic and recession hit. Officials now foresee that the deficit could more than double for 2020, according to a person familiar with the matter. One of the Vatican's major sources of income, the Vatican Museums, which normally earn a profit of more than EUR40 million a year, has practically dried up along with international tourism to Italy.

The Vatican has also been beset by a scandal over a property investment in London's upscale Chelsea neighborhood. Vatican prosecutors have charged an Italian businessman with extortion, embezzlement, fraud and money laundering in connection with the investment.

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