Woman is named undersecretary of Vatican congregation.

Vatican City--For the first time John Paul II has entrusted a woman with a post with executive powers in a Congregation of the Roman Curia. Sister Enrica Rosanna, 66, was appointed Undersecretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. A religious of a Salesian congregation, Sister Enrica was until now professor of sociology of religion at the Auxilium Pontifical Faculty of Education Sciences, which her religious congregation directs.

"Frankly, I feel somewhat lost," she told Vatican Radio. "I feel, however, the support of prayer and of all the religious, in particular, my sisters." Noting the significance of a woman being appointed to the Curia post, Sister Enrica echoed a theme from the Pope's 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem (The dignity of women):

"Women will save humanity," she said, "because they are capable of compassion, because they are able to appreciate beauty, because they are capable of sacrifice, because they are capable of going where there is need, and are capable of seeing beyond ordinary life to go where life is wanting or where the necessary is lacking."

In the last few months, the Pope has appointed American Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon as president of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences and Italian archaeologist Leticia Pani Ermini as president of the Roman Academy of Archaeology.

In March 2004, the Holy Father appointed the first women theologians as members of the International Theological Commission. They are American Sister Sarah Butler, professor of theology at St. Mary of the Lake University in Mundelein, Illinois, and German Barbara Hallensleben, professor at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland (Zenit. April 25, 2004).