(OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV appointed Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado, president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, as prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication on June 2.

Alvarado, a Mexican-American Catholic who grew up in Miami, will succeed Paolo Ruffini, whom Pope Francis appointed in 2018 as the first lay prefect of a dicastery. She will assume the post November 1.

She will be the first laywoman who is not a religious sister to lead a dicastery, and, at age 39, will be by far the youngest prefect in the Roman Curia.

The first woman to head a Vatican dicastery was an Italian Consolata Missionary, Sister Simona Brambilla, who was 59 when Pope Francis appointed her in January 2025 as prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Pope Leo XIV confirmed his predecessor’s appointment of another high-ranking woman at the Vatican, Sister Raffaella Petrini, a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist, as president of the office governing Vatican City State in May 2025. He named Sister Nina Benedikta Krapic, a Sister of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, as the deputy director of the Holy See Press Office in February.

A career in religious liberty and Catholic media

Currently based in Washington, Alvarado holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Florida International University and a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University. She began working in communications for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington-based nonprofit law firm that defends religious freedom cases, in 2009, rising to vice president and executive director in 2017.

In 2021, she began a professional transition to Catholic media, becoming the host of the weekly news show “EWTN News In Depth” while still working for the Becket Fund. She was named president and COO of EWTN News in 2023.

Pope Francis established the Vatican Dicastery for Communication in 2015 as part of his reform of the Roman Curia. The dicastery oversees the Holy See’s communications systems, including Vatican News, Vatican Radio, L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican Media, the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican publishing house, the Vatican Printing Press, and the Filmoteca Vaticana.

Outgoing prefect welcomes transition

“The Dicastery for Communication has embedded in its very DNA the duty to remain constantly attuned to the rapidly changing world of communication,” Ruffini said in a statement on the day of Alvarado’s appointment.

“I have now entered the final lap of the race, before the moment when, in the long journey that is our working life, having reached the age of 70, the age set for retirement, I will pass the baton to Montserrat Alvarado as the next prefect,” he said. “Over the last couple of years, we have come to know each other. And in the coming months, we will work closely together, in the spirit of communion that unites us in the Church.”

In a statement about Alvarado’s appointment, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, congratulated her on behalf of the conference.

“We are grateful for her work as a Catholic journalist, faithfully covering the work of the bishops, and also for her advocacy and dedication to upholding religious freedom and human dignity at the Becket Fund,” the archbishop said. “I assure her of our prayers as she continues to serve the universal Church with her unique talents.”

Meeting with the pope and a path forward

Alvarado was received in a private audience with Pope Leo XIV together with Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez of Philadelphia on September 6, 2025, to discuss the pope’s digital outreach to American Catholic youth at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis.

“I was recently told by a dear friend to thank God for the doors that open that we never knock on,” Alvarado said in a statement after her appointment. “While this appointment was unexpected, I receive it with a sincere desire to serve the Holy Father as he begins his pontificate.”

“At the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV asked journalists and communicators to never separate the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it, and to preserve human faces and voices which are God’s indelible mark on our humanity in each of us. It is with this understanding of our vocation as communicators that I receive this appointment with deep gratitude, humility, and trust in the Lord,” Alvarado said.

—
Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X.