Engage in dialogue, not strife, Pope tells Vatican lay employees

October 06, 2026

Pope Leo XIV encouraged members of the Association of Lay Vatican Employees to engage in dialogue rather than foment conflict.

The Pope’s words, delivered during an October 5 audience, came nine months after the association reported widespread dissatisfaction among its members, including distrust of managers and reports of mistreatment in the workplace.

Pope Leo said:

Saint John Paul II recognized that—I quote—“to promote such a spirit … Associations of workers, such as the Association of Lay Vatican Employees, can play a valuable collaborative role,” adding that “it is not in keeping with the Church’s social teaching for such organizations to drift into conflict or strife.”

The path of dialogue, therefore, remains the main route along which I too urge you always to walk, with confidence and creativity, in our shared search for appropriate solutions to the problems we must face together and in the daily edification of our working community. ... In particular, the Association of Lay Employees in the Vatican is defined, in the current “Regulatory Framework” governing it, as “a structure for dialogue between its members and the Labor Office of the Apostolic See.

Members of the Association of Women in the Vatican were also present at the audience.

Women’s “expertise, capacity for discernment, creativity and practicality enrich the life of institutions and help to attain a broader perspective on reality and the challenges we face,” Pope Leo said. “As we journey together along this path, we shall commit ourselves to building, ever more so, a working community where people are not exploited or sidelined, where we help one another, and where each person’s value and competence are recognized, thereby avoiding the generation of dissatisfaction and resentment.”

 

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Further information:

• To the Delegation of the Association of Vatican Lay Employees and the Association Women in the Vatican (Dicastery for Communication - Vatican Media, 10/5/26)
• Audience with representatives of the Association of Lay Vatican Employees, and the Association Donne in Vaticano (“Women in the Vatican”) (Holy See Press Office, 10/5/26)
• Pope: Women’s contributions to Vatican must be increasingly valued (Vatican News, 10/5/26)
• Vatican employees report distrust of managers, mistreatment in the workplace (CWN, 1/23/26)