Sr. Nathalie Becquart didn’t expect to become a religious sister. She began her career in a typical way, working as a marketing consultant after completing a business degree.
But as a young adult, she spent a year volunteering at a school in Lebanon run by the Sisters of Nazareth — and everything changed. She felt her own calling to religious life and joined the Congregation of Xavières in her native France.
After a postulancy in Marseille and two years of novitiate, she gave the next 32 years of her life to youth ministry work. Sister Becquart served the French Catholic scouting movement, campus ministry and the National Service for the Evangelization of Youth and Vocations (SNEJV) of the French Bishops’ Conference.
Her youth ministry work brought her to Sydney, Australia, for the first time in 2008 for World Youth Day. At the time, she never could have imagined that one day she would be closely united to Australia in a special way, as she recently received an honorary degree from Australian Catholic University for her remarkable achievements and service.
On May 28, Becquart received a Doctor of the University (Honoris Causa) at the Australian Catholic University Rome Campus, recognizing her contributions to youth ministry and synodality, as well as her leadership in advancing women and laity in the Church. In accepting the degree, she spoke of “the special and deep bond I feel with Australia, which has given me and taught me so much.”
The degree is just the latest of her many honors. Becquart became an internationally known figure when Pope Francis appointed her Under Secretary of the General Secretariat of Synod — the highest-ranking woman in the Vatican at that time. The BBC named her one of the 100 most influential and inspiring women of 2022, and in 2023 she appeared in Forbes’ “50 over 50” for Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
But after a lifetime of service, honor and glory are not what Becquart sees as her true legacy.
“I must say from the outset that the titles — ’most influential woman,’ ‘first woman to vote at the Synod’ — always make me uncomfortable as I don’t think I deserve it,” Sr. Becquart said in her acceptance speech.
What matters to me is the question that Pope Francis, and now Pope Leo, puts to the whole Church: How do we walk together as men and women to better serve the mission of the Church? How do we make the Church a space where every baptized person — man or woman, ordained or lay, from the Global North or the Global South — is recognized in their dignity and their responsibility? That is the legacy I hope to leave — not a glass ceiling shattered, but a Church more faithful to itself by being a more participatory and missionary Church.
She praised Pope Leo XIV for his leadership, citing his rare and important ability “to hold together two dimensions that some have set in opposition: the missionary impulse and the institutional dimension of the Church.”
Becquart encouraged the 2026 graduating cohort to seek out authentic personal encounters, saying:
Do not be afraid of the real world. Go and be with the people where they are to face the situations and challenges concretely, not in theory. University has given you tools, a formation of the mind and of judgement. But the “real world,” as you call it, cannot be resolved by algorithms or business plans. It is a world of people and encounters.
Speaking from her own experience of discerning religious life after completing a business degree, Sr Becquart said selflessness and service was the key to a meaningful life.
Life has no meaning if we want to keep for ourselves what we have received… The meaning of life is to recognize that life is a gift of God, that everything we are has been received, and that we are invited to give back all that we have received — in love and service to others, even to the gift of ourselves.
Ask yourselves, at every stage of your professional lives: Does what I do contribute to the dignity of those around me? Does it help others grow and serve the common good? Do I leave the world a little better than I found it?
Certainly Sr. Becquart knows a thing or two about leaving the world a little better, and her honorary degree is a part of the legacy of this woman who has become an example and role model to so many.
