On Friday, Pope Leo XIV rewrote a Vatican 2023 law that unintentionally barred a woman from fully serving as head of Vatican City State.

The original statute required the president to be a cardinal.

The development comes months after Pope Francis appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini, a 56-year-old Italian nun, as the first woman to lead the 44-hectare territory in the centre of Rome.

Petrini’s appointment immediately exposed complications and legal problems that hadn’t previously existed because her predecessors had all been priestly cardinals.

As a result, she was not invited to deliver the Vatican City State’s economic status report during the closed-door general congregations in spring that preceded the May conclave that elected Leo, because those meetings were reserved for cardinals only.

In revising the law, Leo revealed that Petrini’s appointment was not a one-off.

"This form of shared responsibility makes it appropriate to consolidate certain solutions that have been developed so far in response to governance needs that are proving increasingly complex and pressing," Leo wrote.

Petrini’s office oversees key revenue streams for the Holy See, including the Vatican Museums, and manages the territory’s infrastructure, telecommunications and healthcare.

Despite this change allowing women to reach top management jobs in the Vatican, the Catholic Church still reserves the priesthood for men, with no indication of movement on allowing women to be ordained, according to the Associated Press.