Maria Montserrat Alvarado has become the first laywoman to lead a Vatican ministry, taking charge of the department responsible for the Holy See’s television, radio, print and press operations.
The 39-year-old Mexican American media executive is also the first non-Italian to head the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, in an appointment seen as a sign that Pope Leo XIV is taking a different approach to women in senior Church roles.
Alvarado, who is known as Montse, previously served as president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, the news division of the Eternal Word Television Network in the United States. She had held the post since 2023 and begins her new Vatican role this week.
She said the appointment came as a surprise. “I didn’t apply, I wasn’t chosen” through a standard recruitment process, she told EWTN News in a television interview.
Pope Leo described the decision as “an appointment from the Holy Father”. Alvarado succeeds Paolo Ruffini, 70, who was appointed by Pope Francis in 2018 and became the first layperson to lead a Vatican dicastery.
Maria Montserrat Alvarado’s background
Born in Mexico, Alvarado moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Miami before relocating to Washington to study.
She spent 14 years working for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit law firm that defends religious freedom, before moving into media leadership.
At EWTN News, she oversaw international platforms producing television, print, radio, digital and social media content in seven languages.
Alvarado has said she had not originally planned a career in communications, telling the network that her “great ambition had always been to get married and have children”. She was married but is now divorced, and the marriage has since been annulled by the Catholic Church.
EWTN, founded by a nun, is the largest Catholic television network in the United States and has become an important outlet for conservative Catholics. Its relationship with the Vatican has not always been cordial, with some programmes criticised for their opposition to Pope Francis, who was viewed by some US conservatives as too reform-minded.
In 2021, Francis appeared to refer to the network when he complained about “a major Catholic television channel that is constantly criticizing the pope”. He said: “I may personally deserve attacks and insults because I am a sinner, but the Church does not deserve this; it is the work of the devil.” Alvarado was an EWTN presenter at the time.
Lucetta Scaraffia, founder of the Vatican’s women’s magazine Women Church World and a history professor at Rome’s La Sapienza University, said Alvarado had been selected for her professional ability.
“This is a woman who has been chosen for her skills and her qualities,” she said, adding that Alvarado’s international background would bring “another way of dealing with things” to the role.
Scaraffia described the new prefect as “a highly accomplished communications manager” who had built her own career. She said the appointment suggested the Pope had “a different attitude toward women”, contrasting it with earlier appointments of “highly obedient nuns” to senior positions.
