The Consolata Missionary Sister will in future head the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
Together with Brambilla, however, a second appointment was also announced: Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime has been appointed Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Consecrated Life. until recently Superior General of the Salesians of Don Bosco until recently.
The naturalness with which Fernández was appointed pro-prefect can be deceptive: Because what a pro-prefect actually is, where he is to be categorised in the hierarchy of the dicastery and what his duties are, is not defined anywhere. So far, pro-prefects only exist in the Dicastery for Evangelisation, which Pope Francis has reserved for himself. The two departments of the dicastery are each headed by a pro-prefect, who effectively have the same tasks as prefects in other dicasteries.
What the management level of a curial authority looks like can actually be read in black and white in the law: A curial institution is headed by a prefect or his equivalent, who directs and represents it; a secretary, together with one or more undersecretaries, assists the prefect in his management.
This is stated in the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, with which Pope Francis reformed the organisation of the Curia in 2022 unchanged compared to the Pastor Bonus curial order that Pope John Paul II put into force in 1988.
The current curia regulations themselves mention the possibility of deviations from the usual structure, namely "due to their special nature or a special law".
A special law outlining the governance structure of the Order's dicastery has not yet been promulgated. This leaves two possibilities: The fact that a woman and thus a laywoman is at the head of a dicastery is - at least in the case of the dicastery of religious orders - a circumstance that establishes a special nature, or else: The Pope has decided completely freely.
The pope can deviate from the curial order at will - the pope himself is not bound by its laws and can do what he sees fit at any time, for example award new titles without a formal legal basis.
A question of honour?
The interpretation that Fernández is secretary of the dicastery of the Order in the usual terminology, but that the Pope did not want to snub the cardinal with this lowly title, would therefore be conceivable.
But then the question arises as to why Francis made Fernández a cardinal at all last year. elevated to cardinal If he had merely appointed him secretary and, as is customary for priests in this position but not mandatory, consecrated him bishop, everything could have taken its usual course.
However, the question then also arose as to why the title of secretary should be problematic for No. 2 in the Dicastery for Religious, when in the Dicastery for Development, a cardinal, Fabio Baggio, even serves as undersecretary. even serves as undersecretary. (However, Baggio was only appointed in the consistory in December to cardinal, so a transfer may also be on the cards).
It is therefore more likely than questions of etiquette that there is a reason for the office of pro-prefect that lies in the nature of things. The curial order itself gives little indication of this, and indeed the very question of the consequences of opening up curial leadership offices to lay people has been the subject of controversy since its publication.
The fact that lay people, and therefore women, can take over the management of Vatican authorities is an innovation of Praedicate Evangelium. Until now, this aspect has remained largely theoretical.
It is true that with Paolo Ruffini as Prefect of the Communications Dicastery has been a lay prefect since 2018 - but he headed a relatively "secular" dicastery. Coordinating the Holy See's public relations work tends not to overlap with traditional leadership activities reserved for the ordained ministry.
Until Praedicate Evangelium, the communications dicastery could be seen as an exception; with the institutionalisation of the opening, however, the exception becomes a general possibility.
This institutionalisation is very compact: The Pope placed twelve principles and criteria for the service of the Roman Curia before the actual curia order. Principle no. 5 stated that each institution of the Curia performs its service on behalf of the Pope by virtue of the authority conferred by the Pope: "For this reason, any believer may preside over a dicastery or an organ depending on its particular competence, governing power and task." This was not further specified.
The Curia as an instrument of the Pope
Firstly, the curia order opens up the framework of interpretation very broadly: the curia is understood as a pure instrument, a tool of the pope. Everything the Curia does, it does in the name and on behalf of the Pope.
According to this interpretation, in extreme cases this purely executive power no longer requires any powers resulting from the consecration; the pope's comprehensive power is sufficient. This position has an advocate in the canon lawyer Gianfranco Ghirlanda. The Jesuit is considered a confidant of Pope Francis and was elevated to cardinal in 2022.
At the press conference to present Praedicate Evangelium, he sat on the podium and interpreted the new principle very fundamentally: for him, leadership functions in the Curia do not depend on the hierarchical position of the leader, but on the mandate given by the Pope to act in his name.
"This confirms that the power of leadership in the Church does not come from the sacrament of holy orders, but from the canonical mission," emphasised Ghirlanda, who, however, also saw unanswered questions as to how this could be achieved in the Church. open questions as to what this could look like in practice.
Such a broad interpretation would be a clear departure from the position of the unity of the "sacra potestas", the unity of the power of leadership and the power of consecration, which was strongly in favour of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Pope Francis would thus have further radicalised a path that Pope John Paul II took in 1983 with the enactment of the new the enactment of the new ecclesiastical code
The canon law of 1983 no longer regulated the unity of ordination and leadership as strictly as envisaged by the Second Vatican Council; however, it remained clear in c. 129 CIC, which is still valid today, that those "who have received holy ordination" are authorised to assume leadership.
Lay people can only "participate" in the power of leadership - however, what exactly participation entails is not specified and has been one of the controversies since 1983 in the question of which competences can be transferred to lay people. Another stipulation of canon law is also of little help, namely that only clerics can receive offices "for the exercise of which ordination or ecclesiastical authority is required" (c. 274 § 1 CIC) - because it is precisely questionable whether and for which curial offices ordination and authority are required.
If one were to follow Ghirlanda's position to the letter, a woman could easily lead any dicastery without having to modify the usual leadership structure with regard to ordinations. However, this ignores the restriction to the basic principle that all believers can fulfil leadership functions in curial authorities: They can do so "depending on their particular competence, governing power and task".
The curia order itself therefore does not appear to recognise an absolute release of all offices for lay people, but rather a conditional one, admittedly without spelling out the conditions for the individual dicasteries: Must the prefect of the faith and his secretary for the disciplinary section have the power of ordination, because the dicastery for the faith assumes the role of the competent judicial authority in the case of serious offences? the role of the competent judicial authority for serious offences and only clerics may be judges in criminal cases? Is it in the nature of things that the special competence of the clergy or bishops' dicastery for clergy and bishops requires consecrated leadership? Is episcopal ordination necessary to preside over the dicastery for evangelisation or the dicastery for the Eastern Churches due to the responsibility for specific particular Churches? Are lay prefects possibly only left with the dicasteries that focus on content rather than church leadership, such as communication and development?
Irony of church history
From this perspective, labelling Fernández as a "pro-prefect" seems to represent a departure from Ghirlanda's position. The appointment of a woman as prefect seems to be a case where a change in the usual leadership structure stems from the nature of the matter, and an example of how the restriction of the opening of leadership functions to all the faithful can be regulated in practice.
It seems likely that Fernández's role as pro-prefect includes, in addition to the usual duties of a secretary, all the functions that require the power of consecration. If this were the case, a new irony of history would be added: just as the renunciation of the requirement of ordination for leadership functions is at least a partial renunciation of the sacra potestas doctrine of the Second Vatican Council, the appointment of an ordained deputy to perform acts linked to ordination is reminiscent of the medieval episcopal sect, who, as lay people, were holders of a bishop's chair but were dependent on auxiliary bishops to exercise their ministry.
However, it is unclear which acts linked to the ordination must be replaced by a prefect. Strictly speaking, episcopal ordination is only required for two clearly defined things: membership of the College of Bishops and the ability to validly confer ordinations, in addition to which it generally confers a reference to the sovereign power of leadership. The jurisdiction of the dicastery for religious orders includes dismissals from religious orders, dismissals of religious from the clergy, the establishment of religious orders under pontifical law and the cancellation of all religious orders, including those under diocesan law.
Are these sovereign acts that require the power of consecration, possibly in their full form of episcopal consecration? Or are they sovereign acts that, according to Ghirlanda's theory of full delegation, could also be carried out by the prefect in the exercise of the papal mandate? In any case, the leadership of religious orders does not require ordination, as Pope Francis decreed in the year of the reform of the Curia when he authorised the Dicastery for Religious to grant clerical orders permission to allow non-ordained members of the order to take on the leadership of the order.
A clear answer to these questions will probably only emerge when the role of the pro-prefect is also defined in legal form and not just through the creation of the title by appointment.
In any case, there is much to suggest that the title of pro-prefect is not intended to serve clerical vanity, but that it is based on considerations that see a stronger role for the power of consecration in the leadership of the curial authorities than initially appeared to be the case and that canon lawyers have already recognised with the new Curia Constitution.
Vicars general on the horizon on the horizon: All leadership functions seem cannot be delegated to lay people and certainly not every synodal dream can be fuelled by a female prefect.