Vatican City - Leo XIV has appointed Maria Montserrat Alvarado to the Board of Directors of the “Fratello Sole” Foundation. Alvarado is the Mexican executive and US citizen who will succeed Paolo Ruffini as head of the Dicastery for Communication on 1 November; the appointment refers to her as “Prefect-designate”. Her appointment brings the board of the Foundation, established on 1 June, to the three members required under its Statutes.
The Foundation was established by Leo XIV in a chirograph dated 1 June 2026, through which the Pope also approved its Statutes. Its registered office is in Vatican City State, at the Governorate, and it operates in the extraterritorial area of Santa Maria di Galeria, the estate north of Rome that has housed Vatican Radio’s transmission centre since 1957. Its task is to build and manage, including financially, the agrivoltaic plant intended to meet the Vatican’s entire electricity demand, as well as supplying power to the antennas already on the site. The Statutes also allow the Foundation to build other renewable-energy facilities elsewhere, raise funds, set up companies and enter into agreements with financial institutions.
The project dates back to Francis. In the Motu Proprio “Fratello Sole” of 21 June 2024, the Pope entrusted the President of the Governorate and the President of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) with responsibility for building the plant, appointing them Extraordinary Commissioners. Since the estate belongs to the Holy See but lies on Italian territory, a bilateral agreement between the two states was required. It was signed at Palazzo Borromeo on 31 July 2025 by Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher and Ambassador Francesco Di Nitto, ratified by Italy through Law No. 52 of 1 April 2026 and entered into force on 27 May. The agreement extends to the plant the special regime already granted to the radio installations, including certain tax exemptions, but excludes access to Italian renewable-energy incentives and stipulates that its implementation must impose no costs on Italy’s public finances. Leo XIV’s chirograph expressly cites the agreement’s entry into force as the reason for moving to “act promptly” to establish the new body.
The Foundation’s leadership structure is largely set by its Statutes. The President and Vice-President are, ratione muneris, the President of the Governorate and the President of APSA, with the two posts alternating every three years. For the first term, the Pope appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini as President and Archbishop Giordano Piccinotti as Vice-President. The two are the Foundation’s legal representatives, convene the board, may act independently on individual transactions of up to €5,000, and jointly appoint the Sole Statutory Auditor, the body responsible for financial oversight. The third director, however, is the only member chosen freely by the Pope, on a joint proposal from the Governorate and APSA. The appointment lasts three years and may be renewed only once. The director receives no remuneration, only reimbursement of documented expenses, and must place on record any actual or potential conflict of interest, abstaining from both discussion and voting.
Leo XIV has appointed Alvarado to this third position. The Statutes do not require the third member to have any particular expertise in energy or agriculture. The connection, however, is clear: the Santa Maria di Galeria transmission centre comes under the Dicastery for Communication, and Francis’s Motu Proprio identified supplying electricity to the radio station as the plant’s first purpose. The incoming prefect will therefore sit on the board of the body that will supply power to facilities belonging to her dicastery and operate on the land where those facilities are located.
The board is responsible for authorising acts of extraordinary administration, a category that under the Statutes includes the disposal of assets worth more than €500,000 a year and the acceptance of donations subject to obligations; approving the annual programme of activities, which must include a proposed tariff for the energy supplied to Vatican entities; and approving the budget by October and the final accounts by April. Meetings are quorate when two of the three directors are present and, in the event of a tie, the President has the casting vote. The Statutes also required implementing regulations to be adopted within three months of the Foundation’s establishment, a deadline that expired on 1 September.
The project envisages a capacity of between 80 and 90 megawatts, with panels covering around 200 of the estate’s 450 hectares, an investment of roughly €100 million and an estimated 18 to 24 months for the authorisation process and construction. For comparison, in its first Biennial Transparency Report, submitted to the United Nations in December 2024, the Vatican reported average annual electricity consumption of 34.2 gigawatt-hours between 2011 and 2019. Excess energy could be used to supply other institutions linked to the Holy See, including the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, while any remaining surplus could be sold to Italy. On 10 June, the Governorate, APSA and the Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with Acea to define the technical aspects of the project, which will have to combine electricity generation with agricultural activity and the management of water resources.
Alvarado was born in Mexico City and studied at Florida International University and George Washington University. From 2009 to 2023 she worked at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a US organisation specialising in religious-freedom litigation, and from 2023 served as President and Chief Operating Officer of EWTN News, the news division of the American Catholic network Eternal Word Television Network. Her appointment as prefect, announced on 2 June, made her the first non-consecrated laywoman to head a dicastery of the Roman Curia.
