ROME — Pope Leo XIV named Maria Montserrat Alvarado as the new prefect of the Dicastery of Communications, replacing Paolo Ruffini. The appointment places Alvarado at the head of one of the Vatican’s most influential departments, which oversees the Holy See’s television, radio, online, publishing, and newspaper operations and maintains one of the largest budgets among Vatican offices.
Alvarado, a laywoman born in Mexico City, currently serves as president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, which describes itself as the largest Catholic media organization in the world. Based in Washington, D.C., EWTN operates in seven languages and includes the Catholic News Agency, National Catholic Register, and ACI Group among its branches.
Before joining EWTN as a news anchor, Alvarado held leadership roles at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a U.S.-based organization that has pursued church-state legal cases to defend religious freedom. Her selection marks a rare instance of a layperson—and a woman—leading a major Vatican dicastery.
Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago, has signaled a desire to reform how the Catholic Church communicates its message globally. He has summoned cardinals to the Vatican later this month for a meeting aimed at “reassessing the effectiveness of ecclesial communication, including at the level of the Holy See, from a more explicitly missionary perspective,” among other topics.
The appointment comes years after Pope Francis, in 2021, stated that media criticism of him was “the work of the devil.” Those remarks were widely interpreted as being directed at EWTN.