VATICAN CITY, Rome — With the appointment of Sister Nina Benedikta Krapić, MVZ, as new Deputy Director of the Holy See, the Vatican's Secretariat of State will be engaging more with international journalists in order to update the media regarding the latest developments within the Catholic Church under Pope Leo XIV.

The pope also appointed Sr. Krapić as new Deputy Director of Holy See Press Office, and chief of the Dicastery for Communication, taking the place of Cristiane Murray, who has stepped down from the position she had held since July 2019.

The Secretariat of State (Latin: Secretaria Status; Italian: Segreteria di Stato) is the oldest dicastery in the Roman Curia, the central papal governing bureaucracy of the Catholic Church. It is headed by the Cardinal Secretary of State and performs all the political and diplomatic functions of the Holy See.

The Secretariat is divided into three sections: the Section for General Affairs, the Section for Relations with States, and, since 2017, the Section for Diplomatic Staff.

A member of a Croatian religious order and until now an official of the Dicastery for Communication, Krapić will take up her new role on March 1, 2026.

She was born in Rijeka, Croatia on June 7, 1989 and obtained her degree in Law in 2015 from the University of Rijeka and later specialized in Public Relations at the University of Zagreb in 2023.

She made her perpetual vows in the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul on August 13, 2023. Serving as head of communications for Caritas of the Archdiocese of Rijeka, she has also worked as a journalist and as a legal advisor for women victims of domestic violence and other marginalized individuals.

Since 2023, she has been an official of the Dicastery for Communication and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Social Sciences at the Collegium Maximum of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.