Simona Brambilla

Simona Brambilla ISMC (born 27 March 1965) is an Italian Roman Catholic nun and missionary who led the women's branch of the Consolata Missionaries from 2011 to 2023 and became secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life in October 2023, making her one of the highest-ranking women in the Roman Curia.

Biography
Brambilla was born in Monza, in Lombardy, on 27 March 1965. She obtained a diploma in nursing 1986 and worked at the L. Mandic Hospital in Merate (Province of Lecco). She entered the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of Consolata in 1988 and made her first religious profession in 1991. She received a licentiate in psychology from the Institute of Psychology of the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1998.

Beginning in 1999, after making her final profession, she was responsible for youth ministry at the Macua Xirima Study Center in Maua, Mozambique.

She taught from 2002 to 2006 at the Gregorian's Institute of Psychology and earned a doctorate in psychology there in 2008, with a thesis on evangelization and inculturation in Mozambique.

She served as general councilor from 2005 to 2011.

She was elected to a six-year term as superior general of the women's branch of the Consolata Missionaries on 7 June 2011 and elected to a second term in 2017, which concluded in May 2023.

Pope Francis chose her to participate in the 2023 Synod of Bishops on Synodality. On 8 July 2019, Pope Francis named her and six others were named the first women members of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

On 7 October 2023, Pope Francis appointed her secretary of that Dicastery. She is the second woman to hold this rank in a dicastery of the Roman Curia after Alessandra Smerilli at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, while two other women hold the same title at other departments (not dicasteries), Nathalie Becquart at the Synod of Bishops and Raffaella Petrini at the Governorate of Vatican City State.

Selected writings

 * Insights from the experience of a women's missionary congregation in dialogue with Teresa of Lisieux