Pope Leo XIV Names First Woman to Lead Pontifical Mission Societies

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Sister Mary Teresa Barron, N.S.A., as undersecretary of the Dicastery for Evangelization and president of the Pontifical Mission Societies. The Irish religious sister will become the first woman to lead the organization, which oversees initiatives including the World Mission Sunday collection.

The appointment was announced in the Holy See Press Office bulletin, with Mary set to assume her roles on January 4, 2027. Mary will serve as undersecretary in the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches, formerly known as Propaganda Fide. The section is headed by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as pro-prefect.

The undersecretary position had remained vacant since March 2025, when Pope Francis reassigned its previous officeholder to the Governorate of Vatican City State, according to a report.

Key Highlights:

• Pope Leo XIV appoints Sister Mary Teresa Barron as the first woman to lead the Pontifical Mission Societies
• Mary will assume her new role on January 4, 2027, overseeing global missionary initiatives
• She brings extensive missionary experience in Africa and leadership experience in international Catholic organizations

The Pontifical Mission Societies consist of four societies: the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the Holy Childhood Association, the Society of St Peter the Apostle, which works for the formation of native clergy, and the Missionary Union. The announcement follows Mission October and 10 days before the 100th World Mission Day to be celebrated on October 18 with the theme, “One in Christ, united in mission.”

Mary, who was born in Donegal on November 7, 1968, is superior general of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles, established for mission duty in Africa. She served as a missionary in Nigeria and Tanzania on AIDS, pastoral care and the promotion of women projects.

She has a master’s in Public Health Administration from the Institute of Public Administration (Ireland) and masters in International Development from Kimmage Institute, also in Dublin.

From 2022 to 2025 she was Chair of SEDOS (Roman service for documentation and study on mission) as well as Chair of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) from 2023 until 2025. She is also a consultant for the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and was already a member of the Dicastery for Evangelization.

In November 2025, her name hit the international news when armed men attacked St. Mary's School in the Nigerian diocese of Kontagora, where her order runs the school, and kidnapped 265 students and teachers. Barron led public appeals for their release. One hundred of them were released in December, and she denounced the “atrocious conditions” under which the others were still being kept in the jungle, many of them from five to twelve years old, and called on the authorities to take steps to enable them to be returned as soon as possible to their families.

Mary was a delegate for one of the daily press conferences during the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024. When Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández had announced that the female diaconate could no longer be considered for discussion in the hall and was transferred to a study group, the religious sister said that the question of the female diaconate should be considered with discernment: “Is the Spirit calling women?” Not everyone who is called to the priesthood or diaconate is thinking about becoming a priest or diaconate, but she said some women feel a call to the priesthood or diaconate.

In the same intervention, she said that she felt the Synod was meant to communicate the options for governance and responsibility that are already there for women in the Church, since “we are quite ignorant of what is possible at this moment.” In January 2025, she talked about the appointment of Sister Simona Brambilla as prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life in the following terms: “It is a pioneering moment for us.

In this appointment, Pope Leo XIV entrusts a religious sister as the head of one of the oldest and most widespread structures of the Church's mission work, with national offices in over one hundred countries.