Pope Leo has named an Australian bishop to lead the Vatican office that oversees the Catholic Church’s extensive legal system.
Anthony Randazzo, Bishop of Broken Bay, on the NSW Central Coast, will be the first Australian to lead a Vatican office since the late Cardinal George Pell.
Randazzo was named Prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts on Wednesday. In that role, he becomes the Vatican’s chief legal expert and will be responsible for interpreting and updating canon law.
The appointment is accompanied by an automatic conferral of the archbishop title, effectively promoting Randazzo from bishop to archbishop.
The position was formerly held by Archbishop Filippo Iannone, who served as Prefect from 2018-2025.
Who is Anthony Randazzo?
Anthony Randazzo was born in Sydney and spent much of his childhood in southeast Queensland.
He studied at the Pius XII Provincial Seminary in Brisbane, and the University of Queensland and was ordained a priest for the Brisbane Archdiocese in 1991.
Before being named a bishop, Randazzo studied canon law at the Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He later worked for five years in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Among other things, the office processes sexual abuse cases against clergy worldwide.
While working in the Congregation’s office, Randazzo dealt with the fallout of the church’s sexual abuse crisis, including during the period in which Australia’s Royal Commission investigated decades of cases of priests raping children and bishops covering it up.
He was formally installed as the Bishop of Broken Bay in 2019.
According to Randazzo, debates about women’s ordination are a distraction from the real challenges women around the world are facing.
During a press conference in 2024, he said while Catholics are “obsessed” with the issue of women’s ordination, “women who in many parts of the church and world are treated as second-class citizens are totally ignored”.
Randazzo was also a vocal critic of the Bondi terror attack and used his social media channels to strongly condemn antisemitism following the attack.
“We must completely reject antisemitism. Violence corrodes the soul of a nation. When it is directed at a people because of who they are, what they believe, or how they pray, it strikes at the very foundation of our common life,” he said in a video posted on Facebook.
What is the Roman Curia?
The Roman Curia is the central administrative body of the Holy See. It is run by the Secretariat of State, which is headed by a cardinal. The Secretariat is divided into three subdivisions: General Affairs, Relations with States, and Diplomatic Staff of the Holy See.
The three Secretariat subdivisions include dicasteries, tribunals and pontifical commissions.
The Dicastery of Legislative Texts – the body Randazzo is set to lead – was first established in 1917 by Pope Benedict XV.
It advises the Pope, checks for legislative gaps, ensures proper legal application of Catholic doctrine, and coordinates with other offices in the Curia.
Pell served in the Curia as a chief financial adviser to Pope Francis from 2014-2019.
Randazzo will remain in Broken Bay for the next three months before moving to Rome to start his new role.
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With AP
Emily Kaine is a national news blogger at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
