Catholic Family News

Feminine Governance in the Vatican

During an interview with an Italian news network that aired Sunday, Francis announced his intention to appoint a religious sister to oversee the management of the Vatican.

“The work of women in the Curia has progressed slowly but effectively. Now, we have many,” he told Fabio Fazio of Che tempo che fa.

“Women manage better than we do,” he added.

Francis was referring to his decision to ask Sister Raffaella Petrini to lead the Governatorate of the Vatican City State starting in March.

The Governatorate was lead by former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò from 2009 until 2011.

Sister Petrini, 56, has been acting as the Secretary General of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State since Francis asked her to fill that role in November 2021.

Her new appointment comes less than two weeks after the Holy See press office stated that Sister Simona Brambilla would serve as the first woman to lead a Vatican dicastery; in her case, the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

That move was widely criticized by faithful Catholics, but especially by Archbishop Viganò, who said it not only “serves to open the Overton window on the admission of women to Holy Orders” but is the dangerous yet logical conclusion of Benedict XVI’s intensely debated resignation in 2013.

“The ‘discomposed’ Papacy is intended to … keep the munus in the hands of a ‘pope’ but yet delegate the ministerium to anyone, either individuals or assembly bodies,” His Excellency said at the time.

“And from here we will move on to the Priesthood, where the munus of the Holy Orders will remain in words in the hands of the Bishop, but the ministerium will also claim be exercised by laymen and laywomen, starting with the Diaconate but having the Priesthood as its final goal,” he added.

While these appointments are certainly worth reporting on, they are nothing more than the mirroring of what has been happening at the micro level at parishes across the country for the past fifty years.

Countless churches across the US — and world — are and have been run by effeminate clerics who have elevated women to prominent roles for decades. That’s happening for a number of reasons — primarily the admission of homosexuals into seminaries — but also because the Novus Ordo itself is an effeminate service. As the late British Cardinal John Heenan once said of it in 1967, “If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel (the Novus Ordo Missae) we would soon he left with a congregation mostly of women and children.” He was absolutely right. We are simply living through its disastrous effects.

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Stephen Kokx

Stephen Kokx is a journalist for LifeSiteNews. A former community college instructor, he has written and spoken extensively about Catholic social teaching, politics, and spirituality. He previously worked for the Archdiocese of Chicago. He is the author of two books, Navigating the Crisis in the Church: Essays in Defense of Traditional Catholicism and St. Alphonsus for the 21st Century: A Handbook for Holiness.

Stephen Kokx

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Stephen Kokx is a journalist for LifeSiteNews. A former community college instructor, he has written and spoken extensively about Catholic social teaching, politics, and spirituality. He previously worked for the Archdiocese of Chicago. He is the author of two books, Navigating the Crisis in the Church: Essays in Defense of Traditional Catholicism and St. Alphonsus for the 21st Century: A Handbook for Holiness.