Vatican City – A new Fundamental Law governing Vatican City State came into force today. Leo XIV promulgated the legislation this morning, on the liturgical memorial of St Ignatius of Loyola, and ordered that it take effect immediately, without the customary vacatio legis. The text entirely replaces the law signed by Francis on 13 May 2023, which had itself succeeded the law promulgated by John Paul II in 2000 and descended directly from the first constitution of the Vatican State, introduced by Pius XI in 1929 in the wake of the Lateran Pacts.
Even before its substance is considered, the speed with which the legislation has been replaced is striking. Seventy-one years elapsed between the text of Pius XI and that of Wojtyła; twenty-three between Wojtyła’s and Bergoglio’s. The document signed by Prevost, by contrast, comes just over three years after the previous revision and less than nine months after a motu proprio through which Leo XIV had already amended a single article of the law inherited from Francis. More than any official statement, this pace reveals how urgently the Vatican’s legislative framework needed to be put in order.
Neither a return to Pius XI nor to John Paul II
Leo XIV retains the framework introduced by Francis: the division into five Titles according to the functions of government - general provisions, legislative function, executive function, judicial function and final provisions - which had already superseded the former structure of consecutively numbered articles used by both Pius XI and Wojtyła. The Pontifical Commission remains the legislative body, while the Governorate continues to serve as the executive body, distinct from the Roman Curia, within the same system of delegations and oversight.
Continuity clearly prevails. The new text reproduces word for word much of the 2023 preamble and many of its articles, including the provisions concerning the budget, the flag and the coat of arms of the State.
The changes consist of around ten targeted amendments intended to address areas of uncertainty that emerged in the practical exercise of government over the past three years. The Supreme Pontiff may now delegate the legislative function to a body other than the Pontifical Commission, rather than merely reserving it to himself.
The office of Vice Secretary General of the Governorate, which was mandatory under Francis’s text, is now optional: the phrase “where appointed” appears several times in the new provisions. The Secretary General is now appointed upon the proposal of the President of the Governorate and is formally entrusted with custody of the official seal of the State.
The Counsellor General may be invited to meetings of the Pontifical Commission in a consultative capacity, an option not contemplated by the 2023 text. As regards the judiciary, whereas Francis’s law merely referred in general terms to “bodies constituted in accordance with the judicial system”, Leo XIV’s explicitly names the Tribunal, the Court of Appeal, the Court of Cassation and the office of the Promoter of Justice, completing a structure already outlined in the 2023 preamble.
The question of the presidency of the Governorate
Among all the amendments, one directly concerns a matter that Silere non possum has followed and documented from the outset. It relates to Article 8, which governs the composition of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, the body that is invariably chaired by the President of the Governorate.
The story begins eighteen months ago. The text signed by Francis in May 2023 stated, without any room for ambiguity, that the Commission was to be “composed of Cardinals, including the President”. Whoever headed the Vatican State was therefore required to belong to the College of Cardinals.
On 19 January 2025, however, Bergoglio announced during an appearance on the television programme Che tempo che fa that he would entrust Sister Raffaella Petrini with the presidency of both the Pontifical Commission and the Governorate. The appointment took effect on 1 March, making her the first woman in the history of Vatican City State to hold both offices. Petrini, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, is not a cardinal and could not become one.
On 25 February, the Secretariat of State attempted to provide a legal basis for the appointment through a statement referring to an amendment to the 2023 Fundamental Law and to Law No. CCLXXIV of 2018. The statement was issued alongside the appointment of the Governorate’s two new Secretaries General, Archbishop Emilio Nappa and the lawyer Giuseppe Puglisi-Alibrandi, the first layman to hold that office.
The problem, repeatedly raised by Silere non possum at the time, was that no text of the purported amendment had been published: not in the Courtyard of St Damasus, not in L’Osservatore Romano and not in the Supplement to the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the only means by which a law becomes legally effective under Vatican law. In legal terms, a measure that is announced but never promulgated has the same effect as one that does not exist.
For nine months, the contradiction remained unresolved. Then, on 19 November 2025, Leo XIV signed an Apostolic Letter issued motu proprio repealing and rewriting the first paragraph of Article 8. From that date, the Pontifical Commission was to be composed “of Cardinals and other Members, including the President”. Membership of the College of Cardinals ceased to be a mandatory requirement for the presidency, which was explicitly opened to male and female religious and to laypeople.
The alteration of just a few words, almost invisible to anyone who does not compare the two texts line by line, amounts in reality to an implicit admission: if the rule had to be rewritten, it means that until then it did not permit what had already taken place in practice.
The new Fundamental Law promulgated today adds nothing further on this specific point. It reproduces the wording of the November motu proprio without alteration, incorporating it permanently into the consolidated body of the law rather than leaving it as a patch alongside the 2023 text. What began as an emergency amendment has now become a permanent part of the State’s constitutional framework.
Through this step, Leo XIV closes a file that for months had exposed the Holy See to the far from unfounded suspicion that the presidency of the Vatican State had been exercised for an entire year without a secure legal basis. Silere non possum denounced this when few others were prepared to do so. Today, that reconstruction is confirmed by the very measure through which the new Pontiff deemed it necessary to intervene.
Taken as a whole, the measure promulgated today reflects a pontificate that prefers methodical correction to conspicuous rupture. Leo XIV, a canon lawyer by training, does not dismantle the structure left by Francis. He reinforces it, removes its most obvious contradictions and clarifies the areas in which the 2023 text had left uncertainty.
The result is a more coherent and robust text, produced through an exercise in institutional repair rather than an entirely new design. Events over the coming months will show whether it is sufficient to prevent further patchwork amendments. What is now required, however, is to begin removing those who supported the previous text and dragged the Holy See through a succession of scandals that have caused nothing but harm to the Church and to the Pope.
Leo XIV’s courage will have to be measured first and foremost by the appointment of a new Promoter of Justice: someone over whom no shadows hang, with a genuine understanding of the Church and solid expertise in Vatican and canon law. After everything that has occurred, stopgap arrangements, internal compromises and appointments dictated by affiliations and protection are no longer acceptable.
Fr.F.C.
Silere non possum
