“There is a strong call today for more women in leadership, more women’s participation, especially in the decision-making process,” Becquart said.

Becquart says there is a need to rebuild trust following the child sex abuse crisis but said it will be a long process.

“We are more and more aware in many countries that the church has failed because there have been abuses and cover ups,” she said.

She accepts the Catholic Church faces a public relations challenge in rebuilding trust and says her background in communications and project management has been useful in her pastoral work and team leadership.

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Becquart did not go to Cardinal George Pell’s funeral at St Mary’s Cathedral on Thursday, saying she had only just arrived in Sydney from Melbourne that day.

In Rome, she occasionally crossed paths with him, including over lunch, but says she didn’t know him well.

Pell was reportedly the anonymous author of a memo that was critical of the papacy of Pope Francis, accusing him of being silent on moral issues.

While Pope Francis was known as being more pastoral, Becquart was reluctant to talk about the differences between the two men, other than to say the main one was cultural.

“I think [with] what people say or write and how they act, you can’t just judge by what you see outside.”

After graduating from the HEC Paris business school with a major in entrepreneurship, Becquart worked for two years working as a marketing and communications consultant for an NGO.

She joined the Xaviere Sisters in France at the age of 26 after working as a volunteer in Lebanon and realising her calling was in the church.

When the Pope asked her to become an undersecretary in 2021, it was an easy decision. Her appointment is now seen as a watershed moment.

As one of two undersecretaries, she is the first woman to have the right to vote in the synod, making her the most powerful woman in the Vatican.

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