Australian bishop to head Dicastery for Legislative Texts

The dicastery publishes explanatory notes to reinforce best practices. For example, in April 2025, it reaffirmed the “absolute prohibition” on altering or deleting entries in baptismal registers. Leo XIV, himself a specialist in canon law, has chosen as the dicastery’s new head a bishop who has already served in several canon law-related roles and who is already familiar with Rome.

A native of Australia, Bishop Anthony Randazzo is 59 years old and currently serves as bishop of Broken Bay, in eastern Australia.

Ordained a priest in 1991, he worked as an auditor for the ecclesiastical tribunal of the Province of Brisbane. In 1998, he was sent to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

After completing his degree in the early 2000s, he returned to Australia and became a parish priest. At the same time, he held several judicial roles at the Regional Ecclesiastical Tribunal of the Province of Brisbane, and later at the National Appeal Tribunal of the Catholic Church in Australia and New Zealand.

From 2004 to 2008, he was called back to Rome to serve at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. During that period, he was granted the title “Chaplain of His Holiness.” After returning to Australia, he was appointed rector of a seminary in Brisbane.

In 2016, Pope Francis appointed him auxiliary bishop of Sydney, and in 2019 he became bishop of Broken Bay. In 2023, he was elected president of the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania. That same year, the pope named him apostolic administrator of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, which serves Australian faithful who have come from Anglicanism.

In a statement posted on his social media, Bishop Anthony Randazzo said he will remain in his diocese for “the next three months” before moving to Rome. According to a statement from the Holy See Press Office, this appointment to lead a dicastery will grant him the title of archbishop.

The appointment had been widely expected, as the current second-in-command of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, Spanish Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, is set to retire next April after 18 years in the role.