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Pope Leo XIV announced on Tuesday a series of major Vatican appointments, one of the largest curial shakeups of his pontificate to date.

Changes at the top of four dicasteries, include the appointment of Sister Alessandra Smerilli, FMA, as prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Cardinal Fabio Baggio, CS as pro-prefect, along with new changes to the Dicastery of Communications.

Dicastery for Integral Human Development

The pope appointed Sister Alessandra Smerilli to replace Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ at the helm of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Czerny was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2019 and had led the dicastery since 2022.

Smerilli was born in Vasto, Italy in 1974. In 1997, she entered the Congregation of Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians, a female branch of the Salesian family. She earned a doctorate in political economy at the University of La Sapienza in Rome in 2006 and a PhD in economics from the University of East Anglia in the UK in 2014.

Smerilli was an auditor at the 2018 Synod on the Youth and a year later Pope Francis appointed her as councilor of the Vatican City State and

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