Any baptized lay Catholic, including women can head Vatican depts: Pope

Any baptized lay Catholic, including women, can now head Vatican departments, ruled Pope Francis.

On Saturday (March 19), the Pope issued a new 54-page constitution for the Vatican’s central administration or Curia called Praedicate Evangelium (Preach the Gospel). This constitution took more than nine years to complete and will come into effect on June 5, said an international agency report.

Most Vatican departments are currently helmed by male clerics, who are usually cardinals. The 1988 constitution had said that departments were to be headed a cardinal or a bishop and assisted by a secretary, experts, and administrators.

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A part of the preamble of the new constitution said that the pope, bishops and other ordained ministers are not the only evangelize in the Church. And it also added that laymen and women “should have roles of government and responsibility”.

The principles section of the constitution said if the Pope decided that any member of the faithful are qualified to head a dicastery (Curia department) or organism, he can appoint them. It makes no distinction between lay men and lay women.

In fact, last year, Francis for the first time named a woman to the number two position in the governorship of Vatican City, making Sister Raffaella Petrini the highest-ranking woman in the world’s smallest state.