Pope Francis appoints woman to head dicastery for the first time
Italian nun Alessandra Smerilli speaks with Belgian bishop Luc Van Looy at the Vatican on October 3, 2018. AFP - ANDREAS SOLARO
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2 min
Pope Francis appointed on Thursday an Italian nun and economist, Alessandra Smerilli, as secretary of the Department for Integral Human Development, the “ministry” which steers all development issues.
This is the first time that a woman has held such a position at the Vatican.
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With our correspondent in the Vatican,
Éric Sénanque
Daughter of a hairdresser and a worker in the automobile industry, born 46 years ago in Abruzzo, Alessandra Smerilli entered religious life in 1997 with the Salesians of Don Bosco, a congregation very committed to education. young people.
Her superior asked her to continue her studies in economics.
She will come out with two doctorates, obtained in Rome and in England.
For several months her voice counted more and more in the Vatican, after having been a consultant for the Italian Church.
Last year,
Pope Francis
created a working group within the Vatican to reflect on the “post-Covid world” entrusting the nun with the task of piloting the economic section.
The dicastery of which she becomes the secretary is a sort of "development ministry", in charge of questions relating to human rights, ecology and migration.
The appointment of Alessandra Smerilli, very sensitive to the place of women in the Church, is a crack in the glass ceiling that exists in the Vatican.
The nun is the first woman to hold such an important post in the Roman Curia.
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