VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
The Tablet [Market Harborough, England]
September 28, 2025
By Ruth Gledhill
Pope Leo XIV has appointed an Italian Carmelite and canon lawyer, Archbishop Filippo Iannone O Carm, as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.
Currently Prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, Archbishop Iannone has also been appointed President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. He will take up his post at the dicastery on 15 October, succeeding Pope Leo himself, whose own discernments in that post were among the achievements that impressed his fellow cardinals during the conclave that elected him earlier this year.
The appointment is Pope Leo’s most senior and most significant to date. It is a further indication of his intelligent, pastoral and detailed approach to governance. As head of Legislative Texts, Archbishop Iannone, 67, is the Vatican’s top lawyer and is experienced in assessing allegations of abuse against clerics. He played a key role in revising Church law, including expanding the reach of Vos Estis Lux Mundi, a framework for investigating abuse, to include lay Catholic leaders.
The appointment comes as the Catholic Church struggles to fill posts such as Plymouth, which has remained vacant since June 2022 in spite of two unsuccessful attempts to appoint a successor to Archbishop Mark O’Toole, who was translated to Cardiff and Menevia.
Meanwhile the announcement of the successor to the current Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, is thought to be imminent, with Archbishop of Southwark John Wilson the favourite.
Pope Leo also confirmed Archbishop Ilson de Jesus Montanari as secretary of the Dicastery for Bishops and extended the mandate of Monsignor Ivan Kovač of Bosnia and Herzegovina as undersecretary.
Born in Naples in 1957, Iannone entered the Carmelite order in 1976 and was ordained a priest in 1982. He taught canon law in Naples before being named auxiliary bishop of his native archdiocese by Pope John Paul II in 2001. Benedict XVI named him bishop of the Italian Diocese of Sora-Cassino-Aquino-Pontecorvo in 2009 and later vicegerent of the Diocese of Rome, where he dealt with the fallout of a major hospital corruption scandal and was responsible for the reorganisation of ecclesiastical courts.
Iannone is also a member of two study groups for the Synod on Synodality, examining the judicial role of bishops and methods for shared discernment on controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues. After the death of Pope Francis, all of the heads of Vatican dicasteries technically lost their jobs with Pope Leo XIV only confirming them provisionally. Iannone’s appointment now leaves another important vacancy for the pope to fill in the Roman Curia.
Additional reporting by Courtney Mares, CNA