All the pope's women: How Francis' legacy is shaping the next chapter of the church

ROME (OSV News) -- While much of the world's attention is on what will happen in the Sistine Chapel and the men who will choose the church's next leader starting May 7, the enduring legacy of Pope Francis is seen in the women whose voices helped shape -- and carry forward -- his vision.

There is "no indication concerning the gender" of those who would help with the conclave "for their professional assistance," Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, said during the April 29 press conference in the Vatican. Despite the fact that several women held influential positions under Pope Francis -- including Sister Raffaella Petrini, a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist, who is the president of the office governing Vatican City State -- none of them will participate directly in the conclave.

Nonetheless, Pope Francis' decision to include women in Vatican governance is a significant legacy -- a reminder of the pivotal roles these women have played and could continue to play in future papacies.

One of the big questions in the air at the Vatican now is whether the direct style of communications of Pope Francis will endure. Pope Francis didn't just change how the church governs or teaches -- he transformed how it speaks, Paloma Garcia Ovejero, the first woman to become the Vatican's deputy spokesperson, told OSV News.

García Ovejero, who today serves as the head of international media for the nongovernmental organization Mary's Meals, which focuses on feeding the millions of children who are still starving in the world, said she lived that change from the inside out.

"Pope Francis preached a church with open doors -- and that means everyone, everyone, everyone, including communicators, starting with himself," García Ovejero told OSV News. "He broke every mold, every framework, every expectation -- and even his own habits."

Having first covered Pope Francis as a Rome correspondent and later serving directly under him as the deputy of the Vatican's press office, García Ovejero experienced both the depth and daring of his communication style.

"What I discovered was the freedom with which he communicated -- freedom that comes from having your foundations in the tabernacle," she said. "Francis was a giant in faith, a man of prayer. And that's what gave him wings -- his spontaneity, his courage, even his provocativeness."

For her, the most important lesson was clear: The church is not just the Holy See -- "those are just the offices."

For Francis, church governance extended to the peripheries. "Just as important -- if not more -- are the women in the peripheries of the earth. The sleepless nights of every woman who gives life in silence and anonymity," García Ovejero said.

For Xavière Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops and who in 2023 became the first woman with voting rights in a Synod, the Francis era was defined by a radical inclusivity and a new way of listening.

"Pope Francis's legacy is a church open to all, a church of synodality that welcomes incredible diversity -- people from every walk of life, from families with children to people with disabilities, to the poor and those on the margins," she said. "Even now, as we gather to pray for him, we see his vision of a Church that listens and includes everyone, beyond all differences."

Sister Nathalie, who was at the heart of the Synod on Synodality, says the process was not simply about structures, but about fostering a missionary spirit. "For Francis, synodality is not just a way of organizing the church -- it's the path to renew its missionary spirit. Through the synodal process, we have learned to listen deeply to young people, those in the peripheries, and each other. This is how the church becomes more missionary: by walking together, listening, and accompanying one another in our diversity."

Salesian Sister Alessandra Smerilli, secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, sees Pope Francis' impact most vividly in how the church serves the world.

"The work of our dicastery is to accompany all the local churches, always aware that everyone needs development, and that peripheries are not only geographical. Our mission is not just to bring the church to the margins, but also to bring the margins to the center -- to ensure that the voices of the peripheries are heard," she reflected.

Sister Alessandra, who has a doctorate in political economy from La Sapienza University in Rome and a doctorate in economics from East Anglia University in Norwich, is currently the only woman in a top position at a Vatican dicastery during this period of "sede vacante," or the period when the see of Rome is vacant before the election of a new pope. Her position highlights the pope's push for financial transparency as a matter of credibility for the church's missionary mandate.

"There have been great strides in transparency, centralization, and oversight of Vatican finances under Pope Francis," Sister Alessandra said. "All this is to ensure that nothing is wasted, and that what comes to us is used to serve local churches and the poor. Financial transparency is fundamental for the credibility of the church as a missionary institution."

Few have been closer to the theological heart of Francis' reforms than Anna Rowlands, St. Hilda Professor of Catholic Thought and Practice at Durham University. Rowlands participated in the 2022-2024 synod process on synodality and was appointed by Pope Francis as an expert during the synodal assemblies held in Rome in October of 2023 and 2024, and also as a governing member of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development.

"Francis' most transformative theological contributions have been to connect the more theoretical language of 'the people of God' in the texts of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) to a set of practices, habits and attitudes that he has codified as 'synodal,'" Rowlands told OSV News in an email.

"This was his translation exercise from theory of the church towards received practice, recognizable to those who have never read the documents but who need to know through sign and practice that this is the nature of the church."

For Rowlands, the lived witness of synodality is key to evangelization: "The vibrancy of a community which visibly draws on and celebrates the gifts and charisms of all will be attractive in mission, and life-giving for its members."

Having participated closely in the Synod on Synodality, Kim Daniels, a veteran church communicator, sees in it the fruit of Pope Francis' missionary openness. Daniels is director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University in Washington and a member of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communications.

"A centuries-old, global, multicultural, multilingual institution of 1.3 billion people came together to listen to each other so as to face our deepest challenges head-on and work to renew our church," she told OSV News. Despite disagreements and human frailty, she noted, the synodal process revealed a remarkable unity of purpose: "That's remarkable and surprising -- and a story that needs to be more widely known."

For her, what Francis taught the world is that "we're called to announce the Good News of the love of God and our neighbors, and that's a social mission that flows from a posture of openness and engagement with the world." She added that he reminded communicators that effective outreach requires a "clear and decisive focus on the beating heart of the Gospel" -- a message of hope, mercy and encounter.

As the church stands at another turning point, Rowlands sees the challenge and opportunity ahead.

"There is a major opportunity," she said, "for someone to develop the space that Francis has opened up through the synod towards being a more truly humble church, close to those who suffer, rich in its awareness of the gifts given to each by the Spirit, more attentive to culture and difference as enrichment rather than threat to truth and unity."

But, she added, unity must always be in service to mission: "Unity is not a mere end in itself; it is unity that builds up the body of Christ in faith for mission. We need a unifying figure who can serve a plurality of cultures, a diversity of gifts poured out, and can witness to a true purpose to the created order to a very skeptical and at times lost world, and that can reach across very different 'ages' of churches -- the younger churches newly discovering the Good News as well as older churches dealing with deep institutional issues whilst trying to refind an impetus to mission."

As Rowlands argued, the unity the church seeks is never uniformity, but "a fruitful plurality of living in and towards the one truth ... unity is in and for the sake of a faith receiving, nurtured and shared with and for others."

The next pope will inherit not just a tradition, but a living community -- made visible in the lives and witness of those Francis empowered to lead, to listen and to go forth in mission.