Vatican City - Pope Benedict is working on a plan to put more women in top jobs at the Vatican, his spokesman has disclosed.
Briefing journalists after visiting the Pope at his holiday retreat in the Alps, the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the pontiff would give women "more space and more importance". At a debate late on Wednesday, the cardinal, who runs the Vatican bureaucracy, said changes would be introduced in an expected reshuffle of senior posts.
"We're drawing up the new appointments in the Vatican - everyone knows that - and in the context of the responsibilities of the women, there'll be posts that they take up", he said.
The top priority of Benedict's papacy is to tackle what Catholic leaders see as rampant secularisation in Europe. A key reason for this, in the view of many Vatican officials, is the disaffection of women who once formed the backbone of Catholic congregations.
The most senior woman in the Vatican is a Salesian nun and university professor, Enrica Rosanna, who is the equivalent of a junior minister. She was appointed by Pope John Paul II in 2004 to the number three post at the ministry that oversees the religious orders.
Ten years earlier, he named an American academic, Mary Ann Glendon, as president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. In 1995, she led the Holy See's delegation to the UN world conference on women in Beijing.
Women in other than secretarial roles are rare in the Vatican. According to La Stampa, 10% of teachers in the church's Rome-based universities are women.