On Sunday, Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado steps into her new role as the youngest and first laywoman (not a religious sister) prefect of a Vatican dicastery: the Dicastery for Communication. The dicastery—to use some Halloween language—is a “Frankenstein” of different organizations, including the Vatican’s press office, newspaper, radio stations, book publishing, film archive and more, which were only brought together just over a decade ago under Pope Francis.

While the exact issues Ms. Alvarado will have to contend with have been much discussed (budget concerns chief among them), one little-examined aspect is the ongoing reform of Vatican communications that she inherits. Understanding that reform, though, necessitates a quick look back at the major shifts in Vatican communications that have come before: the one ushered in by Pope John Paul II beginning in 1979, the shift from spin-master to more neutral papal spokesman in 2006 and Francis’ overhaul of the communications department in 2015.

While the Vatican advocated for a more open relationship with the world of social communications—its blanket term for all mass communication tools—beginning with the brief Vatican II declaration “Inter Mirifica” (1963), perhaps the biggest shift toward implementing that openness was John Paul II’s decision, on his earliest papal flights, to visit the back of the plane and take questions from journalists. Bill Blakemore, who covered John Paul II for ABC, recalled, “We could ask him anything, and did—about sex and drugs and rock-and-roll, about what it’s like to be pope, and about liberation theology, existential philosophy, Spanish cooking—anything.” The Polish pope, he said, held his own, and was always game to answer even off-kilter questions, jumping between seven or eight languages agilely.

That openness was also on display in communications that came from the Vatican: After John Paul was shot in 1981, the Vatican quickly became a source for the most up-to-date medical information on the pope, which it provided in surprising detail. The director of Vatican Radio, Jesuit Father Roberto Tucci, even broadcasted from the antechamber of the operating room as surgeons worked to save the pope’s life.

As those who remember John Paul II’s long struggle with Parkinson’s will remember, though, that openness did not last. The veteran Vaticanist John Thavis recalled in an interview with me during one of Pope Francis’ hospitalizations that the Vatican avoided using the term Parkinson’s for years, instead referring to “extra-pyramidal disease” and refusing to comment on how it affected the pope’s daily work.

The man who oversaw those communications—and all of the Vatican’s press relations—was papal spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a layman and Opus Dei numerary who had worked as a journalist and trained as a physician and became papal spokesman in 1984, three years after the assassination attempt. Mr. Navarro-Valls enjoyed an intensely close relationship with John Paul II; he cried while giving an update on John Paul’s health the day before the pope died. While Mr. Navarro-Valls was appreciated by some, particularly following his predecessor Father Romeo Panciroli (who one former correspondent told me was nicknamed “non mi risulta,” or “I’m not aware of that”), others said he could keep Vatican communications “as secretive as the Kremlin.” The fairest evaluation may simply be that Mr. Navarro-Valls understood his role as shaping the story that was reported, rather than neutrally issuing information.

The role of papal spokesman underwent a major shift around 2006, the year after St. John Paul II died and Pope Benedict XVI was elected, with the appointment of Federico Lombardi, S.J., who represented the more neutral role some desired following Mr. Navarro-Valls. Father Lombardi’s key characteristic was precision, though some may have considered it “spin”: the Jesuit priest often issued “clarifications” of Pope Francis’ comments given during his freewheeling press conferences. Papal pressers had gotten more controlled over the course of John Paul II’s papacy, and Benedict XVI later adopted a system of having questions submitted in advance, following controversy over remarks about Catholic politicians who support abortion that he made during a 2007 flight to Brazil. In the Brazil case, the Vatican changed the transcript of the pope’s comments, something Father Lombardi admitted at the time that the Secretariat of State regularly did. (Father Lombardi, by the way, wrote a quite interesting review of another insider’s book on the transformation of Vatican communications under Pope Francis that’s worth checking out.)

Vatican communications, however, isn’t limited to the role of the spokesman or even the press office, and beginning in 2014, Francis drew together two commissions to review Vatican media and evaluate how its various communications entities might be combined into one cohesive office. That resulted in the creation of the Secretariat for Communication in 2015, headed by Msgr. Dario Viganò (no relation to the excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò). The transition was rough, if well-intended, Father Lombardi recalled in his book review:

It may well be said that this was a gigantic undertaking, and that it was obvious that many difficulties were encountered, not least because of the effort required of the large number of staff to respond to profound and rapid changes in their usual way of working, and often also in the actual workplace. Enthusiasm for positive changes – which was not lacking – was also accompanied by inevitable situations of unease and disorientation. It is safe to assume that this is a price to pay for any transformation that goes deep and marks a decisive break from the past, even at the cost of sacrificing a part of it.

Monsignor Viganò departed from his role shortly after the communications office was widely criticized for publishing digitally altered photos of a letter from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI endorsing a new book series that Benedict said he had not read. Within a few months, the office was renamed a “dicastery” (which Francis would later do for almost all Vatican offices), and Paolo Ruffini, who had held senior positions in Catholic and secular journalism, was named prefect, becoming the first layman to head any Vatican dicastery.

Meanwhile, after Father Lombardi’s retirement as Vatican spokesman (a shorthand title for the director of the Holy See Press Office) in 2016, the American journalist and Opus Dei numerary Greg Burke stepped into the role, with Spanish journalist Paloma García Ovejero as vice director. As veteran reporters themselves, they understood the needs of reporters covering the Vatican, but they ultimately resigned together on New Year’s Eve in 2018. America’s reporting from the time attributed the joint departure to “the fact that their vision and understanding of their role as spokespersons for Pope Francis and the Holy See, and of the role of the Vatican press office, was not fully shared within the Vatican.” Mr. Burke was succeeded, after an interim of six months under Alessandro Gisotti, by the current spokesman, Matteo Bruni; it is not clear if he will continue in his role under Ms. Alvarado.

While I have no special insights into the departures, it seems from my own observations of Vatican communications that one area of tension that could have been at play then—and that is certainly at play today—is between Vatican communications and the Vatican Secretariat of State, which exercises considerable oversight over messages that come out of the communications dicastery. Joaquín Navarro-Valls had been able to circumvent the powerful state department thanks to his one-on-one access to John Paul II, but no communications official has enjoyed such access since.

Meanwhile, as I referred to earlier, the communications dicastery is facing significant budget challenges. In 2021, Francis memorably visited the communications office and asked, live on air, whether the massive operation was actually drawing an audience commensurate with how much it cost, comparing it to “the mountain that gives birth to the mouse.” Three years later, he urged the dicastery’s leadership to cut spending.

With this recent history in mind, I think we can draw a few conclusions about the challenging situation that Ms. Alvarado is entering on Nov. 1. First is that some fundamental questions about the sustainability of the dicastery Francis reformed remain unsolved,which may be another way of saying that the reform itself remains unfinished.

Second, and relatedly, while Francis and previous popes have set out to modernize and professionalize Vatican communications by bringing in seasoned experts like Ms. Alvarado, it seems clear, following decades of this strategy, that putting a journalist in charge of communications can go only as far as the Vatican’s existing structures allow it to go. That is, the relationship between Vatican communications and the Secretariat of State urgently needs to be re-evaluated, balancing legitimate security and sensitivity needs (overseen by the state secretariat) with the need for timely and transparent dissemination of information.

Ms. Alvarado has stated that she did not apply for the job but was personally invited to consider the role by Pope Leo. The personal intervention by the pope may indicate that he is seeking closer collaboration; the question remains whether Leo intends to give Ms. Alvarado the access and institutional authority needed to resolve some of these issues, and if Ms. Alvarado, as an “outsider” to Vatican communications, will be able to overcome some of the institutional inertia that has kept these problems unresolved for so long.

Colleen Dulle is the Vatican Correspondent at America and co-hosts the "Inside the Vatican" podcast. She is the author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter (Image, 2025).