Cardinal Mario Grech was among 14 people – including three women – appointed by Pope Francis to serve as members of the Vatican office that vets bishop nominations.

The set of appointments – besides being significant for Grech – are also significant because it is another first for women to have a say in Catholic Church governance.

The Dicastery for Bishops oversees the work of most of the church’s 5,300 bishops, who run dioceses around the world. The dicastery's members, who include cardinals, bishops and now women, meet periodically to evaluate proposed new bishops whose names are forwarded by Vatican ambassadors. The ambassadors usually come up with three candidates for each opening after consulting with local church members.

The pope still makes the final call and can bypass candidates proposed by his ambassadors and then vetted by the dicastery. But the addition of women into the consultation process is nevertheless significant and a response to calls to break up the all-male clerical hierarchy of the Holy See and demands that women have a greater say in church decision-making.

The new members are Sister Raffaella Petrini, who already holds a high-ranking Vatican position as the secretary general of the Vatican City State, which runs the Vatican Museums and other administrative parts of the territory.

Also named was Sister Yvonne Reungoat, former superior general of the Daughters of Mary the Helper, a religious order also known as the Salesian Sisters; as well as a laywoman, Maria Lia Zervino, president of a Catholic women’s umbrella group, the World Union of Female Catholic Organizations.

Church doctrine reserves the priesthood for men, given Christ’s apostles were male. Women have often complained they have a second-class status in the church, even though they do the lion’s share of its work running schools, hospitals and passing the faith from generation to generation.

Cardinal Grech served as Bishop of Gozo from 2005 to 2019 before he was appointed as Pro-Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops from October 2019 until he became Secretary General in September 2020.

Pope Francis raised him to the rank of cardinal on 28 November 2020.  Last month he was named as a member of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.