Pope Leo XIV appointed last week Fr. Giacomo Costa SJ and Sr. Elena Massimi FMA as undersecretaries of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
Costa and Massimi replace Archbishop Luis Marín de San Martín OSA, who was appointed as papal almoner last year, and Sr. Nathalie Becquart XMCJ, whose five-year term expired some months ago.
The undersecretaries of the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops are relatively minor positions within the Roman curia, and the appointments mostly flew under the radar over the weekend. But the Secretariat of the Synod grew significantly in prominence under Pope Francis, and its influence hasn’t waned under Leo, nor does it seem likely to.
Synodality was one of the many issues left open during Francis’ pontificate, with many of his closest advisors and even the organizers of the Synod of Synodality struggling to define what synodality was or what the synod was meant to achieve.
To many critics, the Synod on Synodality was often framed as a kind of excuse to propose potential doctrinal and disciplinary changes in the Church.
Many of those same critics hoped the Leonine pontificate would help clarify or even correct some of the excesses they saw in the synodality process. And as it happens, whenever Pope Leo has spoken about synodality, he has taken a relatively conservative interpretation of the notion, while publicly supporting the project initiated by Pope Francis.
But Friday’s appointments suggest that Leo seems inclined to maintain a dynamic that was common under Francis: making restrained public comments on synodality and criticizing excesses, while promoting personnel who seem more open to overtly far-reaching positions on synodality or other doctrinal matters.
Last week’s appointments seem to suggest that the Catholics expecting that the Secretariat of the Synod would eventually fall into oblivion – or that Leo would rein in the post-synodal committees established by Pope Francis – will likely be left disappointed.
While Costa and Massimi are complicated personalities, and not necessarily representative of a consistently progressive theological persuasion, they come from the synodal establishment which grew into prominence under Pope Francis — and seem likely to represent business-as-usual for the secretariat.
Moves in the synodal office began when Leo took Archbishop Marín from the synod secretariat last year. While Marín is now a curial prefect, his transfer meant the Secretariat of the Synod lost one of its most moderating voices — and one that is known to be close to the pope.
Vatican officials have told The Pillar that Marín, while generally supportive of the synodal project, found himself frequently a dissenting voice, as he urged moderation within the secretariat.
On the other hand, Marín is being replaced by Costa, one of the steering hands of the recent meeting on Amoris laetitia, and who had been a special secretary at both the 2018 synod on the youth and the 2021-2024 synod on synodality.
Costa joined the Society of Jesus in 1992 and was ordained a priest a decade later, after studies in political and moral sociology in Paris. He led the journal Aggiornamiento Sociali from 2010 and 2021, when he became a consultor to the Secretariat of the Synod.
However, while technically just a consultor, Costa has been one of the leading voices within the Secretariat of the Synod, taking on a public role on the Synod on Synodality from its early stages, and also becoming one of the main organizers of the recent Amoris laetitia meeting.
At the same time, he’s steered clear of some of the most radical interpretations of synodality.
For example, in a 2026 conference he clarified that “synodality itself is not the main focus [of the synodal process], but the mission, that is, how the Church today can proclaim and bear witness to Christ and the Good News. At the center, therefore, is the joy of the Gospel.”
Costa also said in a 2024 conference that the “The Synod is not a parliament, where reaching consensus or a common agreement requires negotiation, bargaining, or compromise. But the only method of the Synod is to open oneself to the Holy Spirit.”
At the same time, he has caused controversy for some of his comments on doctrinal matters.
Costa wrote an article in 2016, after the publication of Amoris laetitia, in which he questioned the idea that norms or the natural law could guide accompaniment for people in irregular relations because “the risk to be avoided is abstractness, which ends up obscuring the very beauty of the value of marriage and the family.”
In a 2021 article, Costa also said that the expression “intrinsically disordered” to describe homosexual relations “ends up taking on tones that sound disparaging, particularly to those who already suffer discrimination.”
“This vocabulary today constitutes an obstacle that prevents many people, especially young people, from gaining access to the richness and beauty of Christian anthropology, including with regard to sexuality... Therefore, seeking an alternative is urgent,” Costa added.
After the 2019 Synod on the Amazon, Costa said that if an Amazon Rite was established “with its own rights, it could also include the ordination of married priests, as other rites do. But these are just speculations, and the final decision rests with the Holy Father.”
Still, Costa was also one of many Vatican officials to put a stop to attempts to forward the diaconal ordination of women during the second session of the synod on synodality in October 2024, supporting a previous statement made by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández against the possibility: “It seems to me that the prefect clearly outlined the perspective when he said that it is not yet the time to make a decision. The matter needs to be examined more deeply.”
Moreover, in a 2022 press conference, Costa listed Catholics identifying as gay and “those who want to celebrate Mass with the pre-conciliar rite” among those who felt “exiled within the Church.”
“As long as there’s no path forward together, no one can feel comfortable, not even those within,” he added.
Becquart’s departure – without a new Vatican post, at least so far – will likely be welcome by Catholics critical of the synodality project, considering Becquart’s many doctrinally controversial statements, and considering the way she had become in popular imagination a symbol for the version of synodality which would call for a “new way of being Church.”
However, Massimi, her replacement, remains a question mark in many regards.
Massimi’s career has mostly been as a professor of liturgy. She made her perpetual profession in the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians – also known as Salesian Sisters – in 2009, and earned a doctorate in theology in the Santa Giustina Institute, affiliated with the Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm.
She teaches both liturgy and sacramental theology at the Pontifical Salesian University, serves as president of the Italian Association of Professors and Scholars of Liturgy, and works in the music department of the liturgical office at the Italian bishops’ conference.
Massimi is also part of the study group 11 of the Synod on Synodality, called “the liturgy in a synodal perspective.”
In a 2024 article, Massimi signaled support for the idea that female deacons in the early Church were ordained ministers.
Massimi also wrote a 2018 book with controversial liturgist Andrea Grillo, in which the authors claim that “‘Reduction to the lay state’ is a classic threat/sanction against the ministry of male clerics. But ‘reduction to the lay state of women’ is a sort of unspoken curse rooted in the entire ‘ministerial machinery’ of the last two centuries.”
“The addition of ‘Attempted ordination of a woman’ to the list of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary… speaks volumes about the profound institutional and ministerial misunderstanding of the issue of women, often reduced to a disciplinary issue, to the logic of abuse, and often echoed by a theology as complacent as it is empty,” the book’s introduction adds.
In a September 2022 audience with Pope Francis, Massimi called Traditionis custodes, Francis’ motu proprio restricting access to the traditional Latin Mass, as “indicating a safe path to follow.”
At the same time, Massimi has been critical of the “secularization” of liturgical music, saying that it is not “an addition to the liturgy simply to make it more festive and joyful, to engage the faithful, or to solve the problem of potential ‘boredom’ caused by ritual repetitiveness. If music is an integral part of the liturgy, it means that it itself is liturgy, that it is not something external added to the rite, but rather contributes to the realization/manifestation of the Mystery of salvation.”
In a 2025 interview, Massimi criticized overtly emotional liturgical music because “the risk—as Saint Augustine observes in the ‘Confessions’ —is that what is sung could distance one spiritually from the mystery being celebrated… Another example is that of acclamations: if I were to associate a melody that is not acclamatory with the Alleluia, I risk destroying its meaning (I am thinking of those who perform [Leonard] Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah,’ which has nothing to do with what is being celebrated).”
“The Liturgical Reform was received as if the liturgy could incorporate everything that’s most quotidian into its ritual to make it meaningful, and so we see songs inspired by pop music, liturgical vestments of questionable beauty, churches that resemble garages... We should ask ourselves whether all this hasn’t actually led to a secularization of the liturgy, distancing itself, without careful discernment, from what came before,” she added in the same interview.
Costa and Massimi’s previous public statements don’t show them to necessarily be rabid progressives. In fact, many theological and liturgical conservatives will find some of Massimi’s previous statements praiseworthy.
However, it is hard to think of any reason why they might become a sort of corrective to the current direction of the Secretariat of the Synod. Costa was already one of the secretariat’s most public faces and, arguably, one of its main organizers, while Massimi has been involved in a post-synod on synodality study group.
Therefore, the appointments can seemingly only be understood as a confirmation of the current work of the secretariat and as further confirmation of the importance Pope Leo plans to give to the Secretariat of the Synod during his pontificate.
While the organization of the meeting on Amoris laetitia last month was officially conducted by the Dicastery for the Laity Family and Life, with the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops taking on a methodological role, the secretariat took a growingly significant role. Sources close to the dicastery told The Pillar in September that most of the organizational work for the meeting had been taken over by the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
In January, the Secretariat of the Synod played a significant role in the development of the first extraordinary consistory of Leo’s pontificate.
A spokesperson for the Secretariat of the Synod said back in April that “the General Secretariat was not involved in the preparation of that important meeting.”
But several Vatican officials close to the Secretariat of the Synod told The Pillar that the secretariat has, indeed, been involved in both of Leo’s consistories.
While much of the secretariat’s work seems to be taking place in the background, the appointment of new undersecretaries that won’t change the theological orientation of the secretariat suggests that Pope Leo does not want the secretariat’s influence to wane during his pontificate.
Sigh…
Wait until at least the study group on the liturgy has released its findings before giving up on synodality.