Who is Tiziana Merletti and why her appointment tells us that Pope Leo XIV knows where to bring the Church of the future

If the good morning is seen in the morning, at the dawn of his pontificate the first appointment of Pope Leo XIV bodes in a change within the church. Sister Tiziana Merlettijust named Secretary of the Dicastery for institutes of consecrated lifeit is the good morning for a Catholic institution in crisis on various fronts. Tiziana Merletti faced them almost all these crises, from sexual and consciousness abuse, to gender gap in the ecclesial institution, up to the leadership problems within religious families.

He did it as a woman, of course, but also as a religious given his past as the superior of the Institute of the Franciscan Sisters of the poor. With Pope Prevost, born in Chicago, he shares a path in the USA. In New York Merletti was superior general from 2004 to 2013carrying out the role of minister of the religious congregation: “At the beginning I kept my identity tight, but the impact with another cultural world sent me into crisis” confessed a few years ago to the new city magazine. There were, therefore, all the elements that the pontificate of Francesco would have, shortly thereafter, enhanced.

The leadership of lightness

Studies in jurisprudence they are useful in the years of Pope Francis, when he enters the
Council of the Canonists of the International Union of General Superior, the organ of the Catholic religious who works together with Bergoglio to change the physiognomy of the ecclesial institution crystallized with John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The synodal approach inaugurated by Pope Francis, that is, the choice to “walk together” within the church is the setting of the leadership model that Sister Merletti experiences on the field: a style that is contemplative and participatory, first of all. Charismatic leadershipwhich is the title of his book on the subject (Urbaniana University Press, 2019) is the synthesis of horizontal management: starting from the idea that every leadership is temporary, the approach to be kept is that of lightness, that is, the opposite of that heaviness of structures where the silence and abuse of power are on the agenda. It is the renewal that is necessary for the Church today, in a context where every year religious vocations diminish. The goal of a light leadership starts from the contrast in lobbying in the general chapters, where that is, women at the head of congregations and religious orders are appointed.

The fight against abuse

But if there is a moment that explains Tiziana Merletti’s commitment as a religious and woman it is necessary to go to 2011. Then she was the superior mother of her order when she took a plane from New York to accompany a sisted at the Court of Cosenza and witness the reading of the device that she sentenced the former religious Fedele Bisceglia to nine years and three months of imprisonment, guilty of sexual violence on a nun: “The truth of his story has been recognized. Which we knew, but when there is a sentence of condemnation there is also public recognition. Our nun did not report for himself but for the other women “he had declared to come out of the court. Merletti is the merit of having fought to make abuses visible in the places where women, especially if religious, are condemned to silence: “Putting the victim to listen to and accompanying at the center and not the institution to be defended from the scandal”, declared to Città Nuova, underlining the urgency of “deepening the situation of vulnerability of the nun in certain contexts and within certain relationships with figures of authority, consciousness”.

The gender gap in the church

On the side effects of the authority, Sister Merletti has always recalled that female leadership is such if it revolutionizes an entire system. The Church, by its own confession, has not yet reached the turning point on this, indeed reflects the same company, where the woman is required greater effort than the man to place himself in positions of responsibility. She remembered it in the new city: «To be enhanced, in society and in the Church, women often required a double preparation compared to that of a man. It is as if the contribution of the woman was worth less, it had less impact ». For experience, Merletti knows that a greater space for women risks blowing up a consolidated scheme, held together by power. And it is power, rather than the single person, who must be addressed, because the abuse of authority can also involve the same community. It is a slow path, but for the necessary religious. An example above all, the Synod on the Panamazzonica region of 2019, when ten religious hearing aid representing the union of general superiors asked for the recognition of the role of women starting from the places where their presence is fundamental.

After the pink appointments of Pope Francis, the choice of Sister Tiziana Merletti by Leone XIV follows the path of renewal that the Church needs. Until a few years ago, religious were used in institutional frames, they were often a pink name in a foolishly male frame. Starting from Pope Francis, in the Church there was room for a more incisive action, a female protagonism which, however, now requires the assumption of responsibility with a view to service. The road is still uphill, but as Sister Merletti said: “The question I pressed is: are we ready?”.