- The erosion of a heritage: anatomy of marginalization
- The Italian episcopate facing the challenge of subsidiarity
- Matteo Zuppi: the voice of a Catholic Italy in search of itself
- Subsidiarity as a challenge and as a blessing
- Romanitas and Catholicism: Reconciling Two Vocations
- What the Roman tradition brings to the universal Church
- The Italian Church, a living memory of a tradition
- ✝ Biblical references
A few days ago, Rome learned that a Mexican journalist, Maria Montserrat Alvarado, would be taking over as head of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See—thus becoming the first laywoman to lead a papal dicastery. The news, announced on June 2, 2026, was hailed in progressive circles as a victory for equality and synodality. But behind the official enthusiasm, in the hushed salons of the Apostolic Palace and in the corridors of the headquarters of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) in Rome, another, quieter, more bitter interpretation was emerging: Italy was losing yet another position. One more office. One less presence in the inner circle of universal ecclesiastical power.
To understand the true significance of this appointment, one must go back to May 8, 2025, when white smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel to announce the election of an American to the throne of Peter—Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who became Leo XIV. The first North American pope in history, born in Chicago, a former Augustinian archbishop in Peru: his profile alone encapsulated what the Catholic Church has become in the 21st century—global, decentralized, and resolutely turned toward the peripheries. The Peninsula, which had provided 264 of the 266 popes before John Paul II, was witnessing a geographical revolution of the sacred that it had itself long deemed unthinkable.
This tectoral movement is not new, but it is accelerating. And the election of Alvarado is its latest and most visible symbol. The question currently circulating in Italian Catholic circles is no longer merely diplomatic. It is properly ecclesiological: can a deterritorialized Curia still govern the universal Church with the same effectiveness? And what remains of the Romanità — this particular genius of the Church of Rome — when Rome is no longer truly Roman?
The erosion of a heritage: anatomy of marginalization
The geographical shift of curial power
For centuries, the Italian character of the Roman Curia was not merely a historical accident—it was an implicit theology of service. The Italian language, the transalpine canonical culture, and the network of dioceses and seminaries across the Peninsula formed a nourishing fabric for the governance of the universal Church. Under Leo XIV, this fabric unraveled at a pace that Roman observers had not anticipated with such rapidity.
The situation is clear. Cardinal Pietro Parolin remains Secretary of State, and his role has even been enhanced under the new pontificate: where Francis had sometimes marginalized the Secretariat of State, Leo XIV restored its traditional stature as a diplomatic linchpin. Parolin addressed the Italian Chamber of Deputies in March 2026, a sign of his strengthened presence. But around him, the landscape has profoundly changed. The appointment in March 2026 of Monsignor Paolo Rudelli—an Italian—as Substitute for General Affairs is one of the few concessions to tradition. It does not, however, obscure the essential point: the most emblematic and media-savvy appointments have gone to non-Italians.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, an Argentinian, remains Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith—historically the most strategic post in the Curia after the Secretariat of State. And now, a Mexican woman heads the Holy See's communications department. Leo XIV's inner circle is Americanized, Latinized, and Mexicanized. Italy still holds a place within it, but it is no longer its natural center of gravity.
The theological logic of a global church
It would be unfair to reduce this transformation to a mere power struggle. Behind it lies a coherent ecclesiological vision, which John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and then Francis gradually developed, and which Leo XIV seems intent on completing. It is the vision of a truly Catholic — in the etymological sense of the term, kath'holon, according to the whole — where the Roman center can no longer claim to embody on its own the fullness of ecclesial life.
The apostle Paul, writing to the Galatians, had expressed this fundamental universality with striking force: «There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.» (Galatians 3:28). This verse is not a sociological manifesto—it is an ontology of the Mystical Body: in the Church of Christ, ethnic and cultural distinctions do not disappear, but they no longer constitute hierarchies of access to the governance of God's people. It is precisely this horizon that Leo XIV seems to want to embody structurally, by making the Curia the mirror of a real catholicity and no longer merely a proclaimed one.
The reform Praedicate Evangelium, The decree promulgated by Francis in 2022, and largely renewed by Leo XIV, explicitly established this principle: lay people, women, and faithful from all nations can now head papal dicasteries. Alvarado's appointment is its most visible and symbolically significant application.
The Italian episcopate facing the challenge of subsidiarity
Matteo Zuppi: the voice of a Catholic Italy in search of itself
In this context, the role of Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) and Archbishop of Bologna, is both crucial and ambiguous. A man of dialogue, a figure of grassroots Christianity trained at Sant'Egidio, Zuppi is one of the few Italian bishops to have a truly international stature—which had earned him regular mention among the papabili during the 2025 conclave. His name was circulating even in the corridors of the Sistine Chapel as that of a possible successor to Francis, capable of reconciling the progressive currents and the more traditional sensibilities of the episcopate.
But Zuppi is not the Pope. And his position as head of the Italian Episcopal Conference places him in a delicate role: defending the legitimate interests of a national Church whose link with Rome is fundamental to its identity, without appearing to represent the very ecclesiastical nationalism that the synodal movement has sought to overcome. It is a difficult balance, one that the man from Bologna maintains with recognized skill, but which is suffering from the growing pressure exerted by the curial reforms of Leo XIV.
Because the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) is not just any institution. It is the heir to a Church that lived for centuries in a unique symbiosis with the Holy See—geographic, cultural, and linguistic. When the Pope reigned from the Lateran or the Quirinal Palace, the Italian bishops were, whether they liked it or not, suffragan bishops of a Bishop of Rome whose universal authority was exercised in their own language, in their own territory, and with their own collective memory. This symbiosis created considerable practical advantages: the training of priests in the Roman pontifical seminaries, access to the Vatican's intellectual and financial resources, and the international visibility granted to Italian Catholic intellectuals. Today, this network is unraveling.
Subsidiarity as a challenge and as a blessing
It would be wrong, however, to interpret this de-Italianization solely as a loss. The Dominican theologian Yves Congar, in his work on the ecclesiology of communion, emphasized a principle enshrined in Vatican II: subsidiarity in the Church is not a concession to centrifugal pressures, but a requirement of the very nature of the Church. What the Italian Church loses in Roman influence, it can regain in local vitality—provided it accepts becoming once again a particular Church among others, and no longer the implicit mother Church of all Western Christendom.
The challenge is real. Italian Catholics, whose religious practice continues to erode in a country marked by rapid secularization, need an Italian Church that speaks their language—not just Italian, but the language of fragmented families, disoriented youth, and abandoned rural communities. If the Roman Curia becomes less and less Italian, it could free the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) from a psychological dependence on the Vatican, allowing it to fully engage in its pastoral work.
The Book of Revelation, in its address to the seven Churches of Asia Minor, poses precisely this question: «These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.» (Revelation 2:1-2). Each particular Church is called to give an account before Christ of its own works—not of the geopolitical influence it has managed to maintain, but of the care it has shown for its flock. It is by this standard that the Italian Church will be judged in the years to come: not by the presence of Italian cardinals at the head of dicasteries, but by its ability to remain a living Church in a changing Italy.
Romanitas and Catholicism: Reconciling Two Vocations
What the Roman tradition brings to the universal Church
It would also be inaccurate to succumb to the easy path of progressive enthusiasm and to celebrate without nuance the end of Italian hegemony over the Curia. Romanità It is not merely a cultural habit or a remnant of ecclesiastical imperialism. It represents a tradition of ecclesiastical governance that has proven, over more than two millennia, its capacity to maintain the unity of an extraordinarily diverse Church. Roman canon law, Latin scholastic theology, the liturgy—all these are specific contributions of Italian and Mediterranean culture to the life of the universal Church.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the German theologian whose reflections on the relationship between the universal Church and particular churches have shaped the post-conciliar debate, often emphasized this paradox: a Church that is too centralized stifles local life, but a Church that is too decentralized risks doctrinal and disciplinary fragmentation. The Roman center, even if it must rid itself of its nationalist tendencies, fulfills a function of arbiter and guardian of unity that no other authority can perform in its place.
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Access the folder →That is why the question is not whether the Curia should be Italian or Mexican, American or African — but whether it can remain Roman in the strongest sense of the term: at the service of catholica, capable of transcending the interests of any particular nation, including Italy. In this sense, the appointment of a Mexican woman to head the Communications Department is less a sign of de-Italianization than an invitation to reflect on what Roman means when Catholicism is finally taken seriously.
The Italian Church, a living memory of a tradition
One question remains that deserves to be asked directly: in a Curia that is less and less Italian, who will preserve the institutional memory of the Holy See? The archives, the governance practices, the delicate canonical balances that allow a two-thousand-year-old institution to function without disintegrating — all of this has been passed down, generation after generation, through a human continuity that rapid reforms can weaken.
The wisdom of the Book of Proverbs offers a salutary warning in this regard: «Without prophetic vision, the people scatter; blessed is he who keeps the law.» (Proverbs 29:18). This verse, often read from an individual perspective, applies with particular force to institutions: without transmitted memory, without preserved continuity, an institution disintegrates even if its leaders are brilliant and well-intentioned. Catholic Italy, through its seminaries, religious congregations, and Roman pontifical universities, holds a considerable share of this memory. The question is whether it will be able to put it at the service of a global Church, without confusing it with a right of ownership over the government of Rome.
The Italian episcopate, under the thoughtful leadership of Matteo Zuppi, is perhaps undergoing one of the most difficult and fruitful conversions in its recent history: learning to distinguish the Romanity — this vocation to unity and universality — of Italianness — this precious but contingent geographical and cultural heritage. The first belongs to the entire Church. The second is the particular gift of a people, which can always be freely offered, but which can no longer be claimed as a right.
In the great transformation underway, Catholic Italy is not losing Rome. It may be, for the first time in centuries, learning to love a Church greater than itself.
✝ Biblical references
3 passages · 3 books
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. (Revelation 22:13)
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It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)
Liberation from the Law through faith: against legalism, for life according to the Spirit.
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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10)
A collection of practical wisdom for living justly, in the family, in society and before God.
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