The Dicastery for Evangelization

The Pope, prefect in person

Article 54 of Praedicate Evangelium states the governance of the new Dicastery without ambiguity:

"The Dicastery for Evangelization is presided over directly by the Roman Pontiff. Each of the two Sections is governed in his name and by his authority by a pro-prefect, himself assisted in accordance with article 14 § 2." — Pope Francis, apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium, 19 March 2022, art. 54^[5]

This provision is without equivalent among the sixteen current dicasteries of the Roman Curia^[6]. Every other dicastery — the Doctrine of the Faith, Bishops, Clergy, Divine Worship, and so on — is led by a cardinal prefect appointed by the Pope but distinct from him. Here, the Pope does not delegate the presidency: he exercises it himself, while the two pro-prefects assume day-to-day management "in his name and by his authority". The choice is not merely a matter of protocol. It means that the missionary responsibility of the Catholic Church is delegated to no one: it remains, at the summit, directly in the hands of the successor of Peter, successor of the Apostles to whom the risen Christ entrusted the mandate "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28:19).

Why this rank within the Roman Curia

In the list of the sixteen dicasteries established by Praedicate Evangelium, the Dicastery for Evangelization comes first of all, even before the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which held first place in the former constitution Pastor Bonus of 1988^[7]. A commentary by Catholic News Agency, taken up and translated by the portal ACI Afrique, explains the significance of this choice:

"While all dicasteries enjoy equal juridical dignity and all exercise a power of jurisdiction, the order in which they are listed has no juridical value in itself; it is nevertheless significant, at least for the first three. By giving the Dicastery for Evangelization the rank of precedence, this choice makes explicit the missionary perspective in which the overall vision of the curial reform was conducted." — Catholic News Agency, quoted by ACI Afrique, commentary on Praedicate Evangelium^[8]

The preamble of the constitution itself recalls that the proclamation of the Gospel constitutes "the first service the Church can render to every person and to the whole of humanity in today's world"^[9]. Placing evangelization at the head of the Curia does not subordinate doctrine, the government of particular Churches, or charity: it directs the whole Curia towards its missionary purpose, in line with the exhortation of Francis in Evangelii Gaudium: a Church whose pastoral workers are placed "in a constant attitude of going forth", and in which "every ecclesial structure becomes a channel for the evangelization of today's world"^[10]. For the full development of this theology of the new evangelization, see the dedicated article: The New Evangelization.

1622: Gregory XV and the foundation of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide

On 6 January 1622, on the solemnity of the Epiphany — the feast of the manifestation of Christ to the nations — Pope Gregory XV gathered thirteen cardinals and two prelates and announced to them his intention to establish a permanent and well-organized congregation for the propagation of the Catholic faith^[11]. The founding act was confirmed and endowed with its juridical powers by the bull Inscrutabili Divinæ Providentiæ Arcano, published on 22 June 1622^[12]. The pontificate of Gregory XV, one of the shortest of the seventeenth century, is studied in detail in the article devoted to this Pope; see Gregory XV (1621–1623).

The foundation responded to a double historical urgency. On the one hand, the great discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had opened entire continents to the Church — the Americas, Africa, Asia — whose evangelization had until then depended almost exclusively on the Iberian crowns, through the regime of the Spanish patronato and the Portuguese padroado: the kings of Spain and Portugal appointed bishops, financed the missions and controlled the clergy of their colonies by virtue of ancient pontifical privileges^[13]. On the other hand, the Protestant Reformation had fragmented the religious unity of northern Europe, making urgent a Roman coordination of the Catholic reconquest in Holland, England and central Europe^[14]. An informal cardinalatial commission already existed since the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–1585) — Cardinals Caraffa, Medici and Santorio, entrusted with promoting the union of Eastern Christians with Rome — but this personal structure had died out after the death of Clement VIII^[15].

The bull Inscrutabili Divinæ claims for the Pope, to the highest degree, the duty and the right to spread the Christian faith over the whole earth, as the foremost task of the supreme pastor of souls^[16]. The underlying aim of the new congregation was to restore to the Holy See the effective direction of the missions and to promote, against the tendency of the colonial powers to treat the local Church as an extension of their administration, a genuinely rooted native clergy in the mission Churches — an orientation that would remain one of the great principles of the institution, sometimes in open tension with imperial interests^[17].

Urban VIII and Rome's missionary toolkit (1623–1644)

Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a member of the founding commission of 1622, became Pope under the name of Urban VIII the very next year (1623–1644) and gave the young congregation its lasting working instruments. In 1627, by the bull Immortalis Dei, he founded the Collegium Urbanum — the Urban College of Propaganda Fide — a central Roman seminary intended to form on the spot, far from colonial influences, missionary priests and native priests from the mission lands themselves^[18]. Shortly before, in 1626, the congregation had acquired a polyglot press capable of producing liturgical and catechetical books in a multitude of alphabets — Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, Ethiopian, and soon the languages of Asia and the Americas — so that the proclamation of the Gospel could take place, as far as possible, in the language of the peoples being evangelized^[19].

Overseeing empires without submitting to them

The relationship between Propaganda Fide and the colonial powers remained, for two and a half centuries, a structural tension. The congregation sought to guarantee the universality of the Church's mission — not subordinated to any particular crown — while dealing with kingdoms that effectively financed most of the missionary effort. As early as 1659, an instruction of the congregation to the apostolic vicars of the Far East explicitly encouraged the development of a native clergy and a form of inculturation respectful of local customs compatible with the Catholic faith^[20]. The bull Neminem Profecto of 1845 reaffirmed this mandate to form native bishops, even though its concrete application remained, for decades, minimal on the ground^[21]. The question of precedence between foreign missionary clergy and native clergy would only truly be settled in the twentieth century: in 1924, the congregation abolished the automatic precedence granted to foreign priests over clergy born in the country^[22].

The reform of Saint Pius X: Sapienti Consilio (1908)

At the turn of the twentieth century, part of the Catholic world ceased to be "mission territory" in the strict sense: the Catholic communities of English- and Dutch-speaking countries had taken solid root and acquired stable hierarchies. By the apostolic constitution Sapienti Consilio, in June 1908, Saint Pius X withdrew from Propaganda Fide its jurisdiction over the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, England, Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, with effect on 3 November 1908^[23]. The same reform restructured the competences of the congregation, which lost its general authority over questions of doctrine, matrimonial causes and the discipline of the sacred rites in the territories remaining under its tutelage, to concentrate on a function of administrative regulation of the missions properly so called^[24].

1917: the separation of the Eastern Churches

A second amputation of competence came under Benedict XV. By the motu proprio Dei Providentis, dated 1 May 1917 and effective on 1 December 1917, the Pope made autonomous the section of Propaganda Fide devoted to Eastern Christians, creating a distinct congregation for the Eastern Church^[25]. The motu proprio explains this choice by the concern to dispel the fear that Eastern Christians did not receive, within a congregation designed for distant missions, the particular consideration owed to them by the Roman See^[26]. It was by a distinct act, the motu proprio Orientis catholici of 15 October 1917, that the same Pope founded the Pontifical Oriental Institute, devoted to Oriental studies^[27]. This institute of higher studies, now attached to the Gregorian University, is distinct from the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches^[28]. Its own history will be the subject of a dedicated Ignispedia article.

1967: Paul VI and the birth of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) gave missionary theology an explicit Christological and ecclesiological foundation, notably in the decree Ad Gentes on the missionary activity of the Church. In the wake of the general reform of the Roman Curia, Pope Paul VI promulgated, on 15 August 1967, the apostolic constitution Regimini Ecclesiæ Universæ, which renamed the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples^[29]. The change of name was not cosmetic: the word "propaganda", which in the seventeenth century simply designated the action of "propagating" the faith, had meanwhile taken on, in the political vocabulary of the twentieth century, a pejorative connotation of manipulation of minds, incompatible with the spirit of a free and respectful proclamation of the Gospel^[30].

The great prefects of the twentieth century

Nine cardinals succeeded one another at the head of the congregation between the beginning of the twentieth century and its merger in 2022, including several major figures of contemporary Catholic missionary diplomacy and theology.

This succession of prefects — Dutch, Armenian, Brazilian, Slovak, Italian, Indian and then Filipino — illustrates the universal vocation of the institution, at the head of which have succeeded pastors from almost every continent evangelized since 1622.

Alongside its central administration, the congregation, now Dicastery, has relied since the nineteenth century on four associations born of the initiative of lay people and priests, made "pontifical" by the will of Pius XI in 1922 and today organically attached to the Section for the First Evangelization^[31].

Pauline Jaricot and the Propagation of the Faith (1822)

On 3 May 1822, in Lyon, a young laywoman of twenty-three, Pauline Jaricot, founded the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Its principle was radically simple: to gather small groups of ten people, each committing to pray for the missions and to give a penny a week, each member being in turn responsible for enrolling ten other people on the same pattern^[32]. This network-based collection system — which contemporary historians compare to the ancestor of crowdfunding — grew at a staggering pace: the Society counted 150,000 members in 1830 and 2.25 million at the death of its foundress on 9 January 1862^[33]. Pauline Jaricot was also behind the Living Rosary, a movement for the popular spread of Marian prayer. She was beatified in Lyon on 22 May 2022, a few weeks before Praedicate Evangelium came into force^[34].

"From all, according to their means, to all, according to their needs!" — Founding principle attributed to Pauline Jaricot, taken up as the motto of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith^[35]

The Holy Childhood of Archbishop de Forbin-Janson (1843)

In 1843, the Bishop of Nancy, Archbishop Charles de Forbin-Janson, founded the Society of the Holy Childhood (today Missionary Childhood), intended to involve the children of Europe in the material and spiritual support of the poorest and most threatened children of the mission lands — orphans, abandoned children, children exposed to infanticide in certain regions of Asia^[36]. The pedagogical idea was foundational for the modern Catholic mission: to associate the youngest, from childhood, with the universal missionary responsibility of the Church.

Jeanne Bigard and the Society of St Peter the Apostle (1889)

In 1889, in Caen, Jeanne Bigard and her mother Stéphanie Bigard created the Society of St Peter the Apostle, devoted specifically to the financial and spiritual support of the formation of seminarians and future native priests in mission countries^[37]. This society responded directly to the pastoral priority, reaffirmed since the seventeenth century by the Roman congregation, of a clergy genuinely rooted in the local Churches rather than perpetually imported.

The Pontifical Missionary Union of the clergy (1916)

In 1916, in Parma, Father Paolo Manna, a missionary returned from Burma, founded the Missionary Union of the Clergy, intended to awaken in priests, seminarians and religious throughout the world a personal missionary consciousness — beyond financial giving alone. The association officially became, in 1956, the Pontifical Missionary Union (PMU), the fourth and last of the Pontifical Mission Societies^[38].

Pius XI and the pontifical recognition of 1922

The centenary of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, in 1922, gave Pius XI the occasion to confer upon these grassroots initiatives their definitive status. By the motu proprio Romanorum Pontificum, dated 3 May 1922, he raised the Societies to the rank of "Pontifical Societies", transferred their central seat from Lyon to Rome and placed them under the direct aegis of the Roman congregation for the missions^[39]. The Pope thus officially recognized the charism of these lay and popular initiatives, made it his own, and erected them as the privileged instrument of his own missionary government — through the prayer and charity of all the faithful.

The Fides Agency and World Mission Sunday

To make the missions known through the press, the Superior General Council of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith obtained from Pius XI the foundation, on 5 June 1927, of the Fides Agency, the first Catholic missionary press agency and one of the very first news agencies in the world specialized in this field^[40]. Its first director was Father John Considine, a Maryknoll missionary; the agency first published in English and French, then in Italian (1929), Spanish (1930), German (1932) and later in Chinese, Portuguese and Arabic^[41]. In the same period, in 1926, Pius XI instituted World Mission Sunday, celebrated ever since on the penultimate Sunday of October, as a "feast of catholicity and universal solidarity"^[42] — the moment when all the dioceses of the Catholic world contribute a collection destined to support, through the Dicastery, the poorest Churches.

The second institutional heritage absorbed in 2022 was born of a different observation: that, no longer of lands that never received the proclamation of Christ, but of societies once Christian that became, within a few generations, largely strangers to the faith. By the motu proprio Ubicumque et Semper, promulgated on 21 September 2010, on the feast of Saint Matthew, Benedict XVI instituted the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization^[43]. The text makes a forthright diagnosis:

"We also know, unfortunately, of regions which appear practically entirely dechristianized, in which the light of the faith is entrusted to the witness of small communities: these lands, which would need a renewed first proclamation of the Gospel, seem particularly refractory to many aspects of the Christian message." — Benedict XVI, motu proprio Ubicumque et Semper, 21 September 2010^[44]

The Council was entrusted with a threefold mission: to deepen the theology of the new evangelization, to promote existing or new initiatives in the local Churches of long-standing Christianity, and to encourage the use of modern means of communication as well as the dissemination of the Catechism of the Catholic Church^[45]. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, then president of that same Council, led it from its foundation; it is that same prelate who became, in 2022, pro-prefect of the corresponding Section of the new Dicastery. Under his presidency, the Council organized in particular the Year of Faith (October 2012 – November 2013) and the Synod of Bishops of October 2012 devoted to the new evangelization.

The full theological development of this notion — from Evangelii Nuntiandi of Paul VI (1975) to the founding addresses of John Paul II on "the new evangelization", down to the exhortation Evangelii Gaudium of Francis (2013) — goes beyond the scope of the present institutional article; it is treated in detail in the dedicated article: The New Evangelization (1975 to today).

An unprecedented governance: the Roman Pontiff, direct prefect

On 19 March 2022, on the solemnity of Saint Joseph, Pope Francis signed the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium on the Roman Curia and its service to the Church in the world, after nine years of consultations conducted by the Council of Cardinals (the "C9")^[46]. The text came into force on 5 June 2022, on the solemnity of Pentecost^[47] — a highly symbolic date, since it is at Pentecost that the Church receives the Holy Spirit who launches her into her universal mission (Acts 2). Article 53 § 1 sets the very object of the newly merged Dicastery:

"The Dicastery is at the service of the work of evangelization, so that Christ, the light of the nations, may be known and witnessed to in word and deed, and that his Mystical Body, which is the Church, may be built up." — Pope Francis, Praedicate Evangelium, art. 53 § 1^[48]

The Section for Fundamental Questions regarding Evangelization in the World

The first Section continues the mission of the 2010 Pontifical Council. Article 55 § 1 entrusts it with the task of studying, in collaboration with the particular Churches and with the other dicasteries concerned, the fundamental questions of evangelization in the contemporary world — secularization, religious indifference, new languages of communication, the promotion and dissemination of the Catechism^[49]. In concrete terms, this Section also organizes the Holy Year or Jubilee, an event for which Archbishop Fisichella has been directly responsible since 2016 — the year of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy — down to the recent Ordinary Jubilee of 2025.

The Section for the First Evangelization and New Particular Churches

The second Section, the direct heir of the former Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, supports the proclamation of the Gospel and the deepening of the life of faith in the territories of first evangelization, in the words of article 61^[50]. In concrete terms, this Section retains, almost identically, the historic competences of Propaganda Fide: the appointment of bishops in mission territories (with the exception of the Eastern Churches, which fall under a distinct dicastery), the erection of new ecclesiastical circumscriptions, the formation of the native clergy through the network of pontifical colleges stemming from the Collegium Urbanum of 1627, and the general supervision of the missionary effort.

According to the figures made public at the time of the 2022 merger, the Section still governs today, throughout the world, some 186 archdioceses, 785 dioceses, 82 apostolic vicariates and 39 apostolic prefectures^[51] — more than a thousand ecclesiastical circumscriptions, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Oceania, where the establishment of the Church remains, to varying degrees, in a phase of missionary consolidation.

The Pontifical Mission Societies attached to Section II

Article 67 § 1 specifies that the Pontifical Mission Societies remain formally entrusted to the Section for the First Evangelization^[52]: the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, the Pontifical Society of St Peter the Apostle, the Pontifical Society of the Holy Childhood and the Pontifical Missionary Union thus continue, one to two centuries after their respective foundations, to feed — through prayer and through the annual World Mission Sunday collection — the central missionary solidarity fund administered by the Dicastery.

Current organization chart

According to the official organization chart published on the website of the Holy See, the leadership structure of the Dicastery stands, in summer 2026, as follows^[53]:

The under-secretariat of Archbishop Erwin José Aserios Balagapo, a 53-year-old Filipino, doctor of canon law and theology, ordained a priest in 1996 for the diocese of Palo, well illustrates the continuity between the former missionary administration and the new one: appointed on 7 November 2024, he already held, within that same Section II, the office of head of bureau^[54].

The 2025 Jubilee and the organizing role of Archbishop Fisichella

The pro-prefect of Section I, Archbishop Fisichella, took charge of the complete logistical and pastoral organization of the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025, continuing the mission already carried out during the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016. Interviewed by several Catholic media in the heart of the Holy Year, he testified to the unprecedented scale of the influx of pilgrims to Rome, describing the experience of "seeing all these pilgrims praying" in Rome as making "a very great impression"^[55]. The organization of a Jubilee — welcoming several million pilgrims, managing the passages through the Holy Door, dedicated catecheses and celebrations — falls statutorily to Section I, in accordance with article 55 of Praedicate Evangelium.

The pontificate of Leo XIV: continuity and first appointments

On the death of Pope Francis on 21 April 2025, the mandate of the pro-prefects of the Dicastery, in the very words of Praedicate Evangelium, ceased by law^[56] — like that of all holders of offices in the Curia. The new Pope, Leo XIV, elected on 8 May 2025, provisionally reconfirmed all office holders, including Archbishop Fisichella and Cardinal Tagle, who continue to exercise their respective offices^[57]. Cardinal Tagle thus continued, under the new pontificate, his missions of representation — presiding, for example, on 2 July 2026, as envoy of Leo XIV, over a Mass of beatification of a Vietnamese martyred priest^[58].

On 27 June 2026, Leo XIV made new appointments of members — not of office holders — within the Section for Fundamental Questions regarding Evangelization: Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, Archbishop of Reims and former president of the Conference of Bishops of France, Archbishop Filippo Iannone, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, and Archbishop Peter Andrew Comensoli, Archbishop of Melbourne^[59]. These appointments of prelates from outside the Roman administration, called to sit as consultative members of the Dicastery, illustrate the now constant practice, since Praedicate Evangelium, of associating diocesan bishops from around the world with the major orientations of the Roman dicasteries.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls that the Church, by her nature, is missionary: "By her nature, the Church during her pilgrimage on earth is missionary" (CCC § 850), sent by the risen Christ according to the mandate reported in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew:

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." — Matthew 28:19-20

This conviction runs through the entire contemporary missionary magisterium. John Paul II, in the encyclical Redemptoris Missio of 7 December 1990, recalled that "The mission of Christ the Redeemer, which is entrusted to the Church, is still very far from completion" (n. 1) and that "No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples" (n. 3)^[60]. The same text distinguishes precisely between the mission ad gentes properly so called — addressed "to peoples and human groups who do not yet believe in Christ" (n. 34) — and the new evangelization of the baptized who have "lost a living sense of the faith" and lead "a life far removed from Christ and his Gospel" (n. 33); and it specifies that, without the mission ad gentes, "this missionary dimension of the Church would be deprived of its fundamental meaning and its exemplary realization" (n. 34)^[61]. It is exactly this double urgency, mission ad gentes and new evangelization, that the Dicastery for Evangelization has been tasked with coordinating since 2022 through its two sections.

The ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council provides the dogmatic foundation of this conviction. The decree Ad Gentes teaches: "By her nature, the Church during her pilgrimage on earth is missionary, since she draws her origin from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit, in accordance with the decree of God the Father"^[62]. The Dicastery for Evangelization, by bringing together under one direct pontifical authority the heritage of Propaganda Fide and that of the new evangelization, institutionally expresses this central conviction: the proclamation of the Gospel is not one activity among others of the Church, alongside government, liturgy or charity — it is the very reason for being of the Church herself, "the first service" she renders to the world^[63].

• The New Evangelization (1975 to today) — the full theological development of the concept, from Evangelii Nuntiandi to Evangelii Gaudium.
• Gregory XV (1621–1623) — the founding Pope of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in 1622.
• The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — the supreme doctrinal institution of the Church, the second dicastery listed in Praedicate Evangelium.
• Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur — the seals of ecclesiastical approval whose granting falls, for certain missionary works, to Roman doctrinal authority.
• The Roman Curia — all the dicasteries, tribunals and offices through which the Pope governs the Catholic Church.