Pope appoints religious sister to run Vatican City State
Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist Raffaella Petrini, secretary-general of the office governing Vatican City State, is to take the role of president of the office on 1 March 2025.
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. In 2021, when Sr Petrini was named secretary-general of the office, she became the highest-ranking woman at the Vatican.
With a surface area of 0.44 hectares, Vatican City State is the smallest independent State in the world, both in terms of population and territory. Its borders are marked by its walls, and in Saint Peter’s Square, by a white marble line that joins the two wings of the colonnade. The security of the Pope and of the State is guaranteed by the Pontifical Swiss Guard, founded in 1506, whose uniforms, according to tradition, were designed by Michelangelo, and by the Pontifical Gendarmerie Corps, which provides police services and security to the State.
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, 56, was born in Rome and made her perpetual vows with the US-based Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist in 2007.
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.
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