ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday made his first major appointment of a woman to the Holy See hierarchy, promoting Italian Sister Alessandra Smerilli to head the Vatican office responsible for migrants, the environment and development.
Smerilli, an economist, is currently the No. 2 in the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. As prefect, she replaces the retiring Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny, who turns 80 this month.
With the appointment of Smerilli, Leo appears to be following suit of his predecessor, Pope Francis, who made a point of promoting women to top-level management positions within the Holy See as part of his response to calls by women for greater decision-making roles in the church.
But Leo too is following Francis’ lead by simultaneously naming Cardinal Fabio Baggio as a “pro-prefect” of the office, where he is currently undersecretary.
The dual nominations recognize that sometimes the role of a Vatican department head requires being an ordained priest and cardinal.
Baggio was also given the mandate to head up the Vatican’s Borgo Laudato Si environmental educational center, at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome.
The Catholic Church reserves the priesthood for men, and women have long complained of a second-class status despite carrying out the lion’s share of the church’s work running schools, hospitals and passing the faith onto younger generations.
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FILE - Sister Alessandra Smerilli, secretary general of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, attends a press conference at the Vatican, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)
ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday begged a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics to call off its plan to consecrate new bishops without his consent, calling the move a schismatic act and a “sin of extreme gravity.”
“I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back!” Leo wrote in a letter to the Rev. Davide Pagliarani, the superior of the Society of St. Pius X.
Leo issued the last-ditch appeal a day before the society plans to consecrate four new bishops at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland. Under church law, the consecrations constitute a schismatic act, or an intentional rupture of the unity of the Catholic Church, and incur automatic excommunication for the four bishops and the bishop administering the consecration.
In response to the pope’s letter, Marc-André Mabillard, media manager for the society, expressed “great sadness to not be understood by our leader,” and added: “We are changing absolutely nothing in our plans.”
Asked by phone about the prospect of excommunication, Mabillard said: “We don’t fear it. It pains us immensely, but we believe that the good we seek is greater than the pain that will be inflicted upon us.”
The ceremony poses the first major crisis for the American pope, who has stressed the need for church unity since the start of his pontificate. He has worked especially hard to heal tensions with traditionalist Catholics who prefer the old Latin Mass, that worsened in some ways during the Pope Francis pontificate.
The society was founded in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the council revolutionized the Catholic Church’s relations with other religions and the laity, and allowed Mass to be celebrated in vernacular languages rather than Latin.
Its members celebrate the ancient Latin Mass and have accused the modern church of being rife with heresies and errors. The society insists that only the SSPX is upholding the true faith of Christ and has justified the consecrations, citing a “state of necessity” to minister to its faithful.
In 1988, SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the church.
The Vatican in 2009 lifted those original excommunications as part of its outreach to try to bring the group back under its wing. But the Vatican has warned that a similar fate awaits the new bishops if Wednesday's consecrations go ahead.
In his letter, Leo repeated the Vatican's offer of dialogue and said that going through with the consecrations would be counterproductive for the SSPX faithful.
“I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit, and in some cases, even valid reception of the sacraments,” he wrote.
Despite the original 1988 schismatic act, the group has continued to grow and today poses a threat to the Holy See as a parallel, ultra-Catholic, pre-Vatican II church. The SSPX counts two bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.
Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Pope Leo XIV holds his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
