Alvarado: I Receive and Execute the Pope's Vision
Days before taking office Nov. 1, the first laywoman named to lead a dicastery points to prayer, Rome, and fidelity to Pope Leo XIV.
Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado said on Oct. 23 that she will not bring a personal agenda to the Dicastery for Communication, but will receive and carry out the vision of Pope Leo XIV when she takes office Nov. 1.
“In no way am I imposing a vision. I’m very much receiving one and executing it,” Alvarado said in an interview days before assuming the post.
The 39-year-old laywoman from Mexico City was appointed by the Holy Father on June 2 to succeed Paolo Ruffini. Her arrival makes her the first laywoman who is not a religious sister to lead a dicastery of the Roman Curia, and the youngest prefect serving there.
From Media Leadership to the Holy See
Alvarado, former president and chief operating officer of EWTN News, said the appointment grew out of connections formed through that work. They included a 2025 conversation with Pope Leo XIV and collaboration on his encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas.”
She described accepting the role as a decision reached in prayer. The move has required her to relocate to Rome and to learn Italian. Alvarado holds degrees from Florida International University and George Washington University. She previously worked at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, experience that shaped her sense of the Church’s public witness in defense of religious freedom.
Stewarding the Holy See’s Voice
As prefect, she will oversee the Holy See’s principal communications arms: Vatican News, Vatican Media, Vatican Radio, L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican publishing house, and related services. The charge places a lay Catholic at the center of how the Successor of Peter addresses the faithful and the wider world.
Alvarado said that encountering the humanity of the Church has strengthened rather than shaken her faith. She presented that outlook as fitting for a mission that must serve the truth while remaining close to the people who form the Body of Christ.
Framing her task as listening first and then executing what the pope entrusts to her, Alvarado has cast the Nov. 1 start not as a personal platform but as obedient service to the communications mandate of the Roman Pontiff.