Vatican City — Pope Leo XIV has appointed Mexican Montserrat Alvarado, currently president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, as the new prefect of the Dicastery for Communication. She becomes the first woman and layperson to independently lead one of the Vatican’s ministries, the Holy See press office announced Tuesday.
Alvarado will succeed Italian layman Paolo Ruffini. While she is not the only female prefect — Pope Francis previously appointed Sister Simona Brambilla to head the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life — Alvarado will lead her dicastery alone, unlike Brambilla who serves alongside Spanish Cardinal Ángel Fernández Artime as pro-prefect.
Alvarado, often known as Montse, will assume the role on November 1, the Vatican said.
She has worked at EWTN News since 2023, overseeing the network’s global media platforms that produce content in English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Arabic, and Italian, according to her official biography.
The Wall Street Journal described her as “a defender of all religions, on the front lines of America’s culture wars.”
Born in Mexico City, Alvarado is recognized as a “proud Latina Catholic.” She holds a master’s degree from George Washington University and a bachelor’s in political science from Florida International University. She began her career at the Becket Fund, a nonprofit that defends religious freedom as a human right before the U.S. Supreme Court. During her tenure, the team secured 12 Supreme Court victories on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Muslim death row inmates, and charities such as Philadelphia Catholic Social Services.
Alvarado was also the founding host of “EWTN News in Depth,” a weekly hour-long news program covering church, politics, and culture from a Catholic perspective. She has held various church roles focused on new evangelization, free speech, women’s roles, and treatment of marginalized communities.
In addition to English and Spanish, she speaks fluent French and is a jazz and classical vocalist.
With Alvarado’s appointment, Pope Leo XIV continues the reform of Vatican communications that cardinals had requested in their last meeting with the pope.
The Dicastery for Communication was created by Pope Francis on June 27, 2015, as part of the Roman Curia reform. It oversees the Holy See’s communication systems, including Vatican News, Vatican Radio, L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican Media (photo, audio, and video services), the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican Publishing House, the Vatican Printing Press, and the Vatican Film Library.
In a statement after the announcement, Alvarado said: “Although this appointment was unexpected, I accept it with the sincere desire to serve the Holy Father at the start of his pontificate. I thank Paolo Ruffini for his leadership in recent years and hope to continue, with friendship and hope, the important work of strengthening the Dicastery so that it continues to serve the Church in Rome and elsewhere, communicating Christ to the world.”
Alvarado had brought a new direction and editorial shift to EWTN, which had been known for strong attacks on Pope Francis’s pontificate. In September 2021, during a private meeting with Jesuits in Slovakia, Francis indirectly referred to the network, saying there was a “large Catholic television network that speaks badly of the pope without any problem” and concluded: “That too is the work of the devil.”
