Sister Raffaella Petrini, F.S.E. will address Notre Dame’s 181st graduating class in May 2026, the university announced in a statement on March 19. Sr. Petrini serves as president of both the Pontifical Commission and the Governorate of the Vatican City State.
This dual role, which she has held since March of 2025, gives Sr. Petrini authority over legislative and administrative matters within the Vatican, making her second-in-command to the Supreme Pontiff in matters relating to the state.
The Pontifical Commission, which Sr. Petrini presides over, is composed of herself and six cardinals. In March 2025, Pope Francis made her the first non-cardinal to take the office, and in November 2025, Pope Leo amended the Fundamental Law of the Vatican City State via Motu Proprio to allow a non-cardinal to serve in the role. The term lasts five years.
Additionally, Sr. Petrini serves on the Dicastery for Bishops, to which she was appointed by Pope Francis in 2022. This is the Church body which evaluates and recommends new bishops to be appointed by the pope.
Before her promotion to president of the governorate in 2025, Sr. Petrini served as Secretary-General of the Governorate of Vatican City State since November 2021.
Sr. Petrini was born in Rome and eventually joined religious life with the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist. The order’s mission is “to restore a sense of the sacred, especially the sacredness of human life, in a world that knows the rupture between the sacred and the secular.”
When she took the role under Pope Francis, Sr. Petrini left behind her professorship at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum). There, she taught as a Professor of Social Sciences, where her research focused on how economic policy can care for the whole human person.
At the time of her departure, the Angelicum published a warm letter which called her research “particularly significant to put into practice in her new role.”
In a previous appearance at Notre Dame, Sr. Petrini delivered the 2023 Keeley Vatican Lecture for the Nanovic Institute lecture titled, “Integral Human Development through a Leadership of Care,” in which she emphasized the importance of a caring leadership, adding that women can bring an “innate caring capacity into the decision making process.”
Joseph Truluck, a senior in Morrissey Hall, told the Rover, “I am excited for the wisdom of a leader in the Church, who seems so motivated by love of God and the Eucharist. I hope to hear specifically how I ought to integrate faith in the coming years, separate from so devout a home as Notre Dame.”
The commencement ceremony, at which Sr. Petrini will deliver the keynote address, will take place on Sunday, May 17.
Caleb Vaughan is a junior studying chemical engineering. He didn’t know the Vatican had a head of state not named ‘pope.’ Correct this and other errors by contacting cvaugha2@nd.edu.