Pope Francis appoints a woman to head the Vatican governorate for the first time

Pope Francis has appointed the Franciscan nun and political scientist Raffaella Petrini, 52, secretary general of the Governorate of the Vatican City State, and thus becomes “number two”, the first time that a woman holds this position.

Petrini, who until now was an official of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, was born in Rome on January 15, 1969 and belongs to the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist.

He has a degree in Political Science from the Free International University of Guido Carli, as well as a doctorate from the Pontifical University of San Tommaso d’Aquino, where he is currently a professor of Welfare Economics and Sociology of Economic Processes.

Pope Francis is giving visibility to the work of women in the Church and last August elected six as lay experts from the Council of the Economy.

One of them, Professor Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof, was appointed vice-coordinator of this council in September.

Also in August, Francis appointed several female scientists to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, including Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier, founder and director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin and a 2020 New Prize in Chemistry.

Also, Donna Theo Strickland, professor of optical physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for having invented in 1985, together with Gérard Mourou, the amplification of laser chirp pulses, Ultra-short, high-intensity laser optical pulses used in millions of eye surgeries. (I)