Late last month, the Vatican increased some key worker benefits for curial employees and expanded access to others.

On July 28, the current prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy signed a measure approving five days of paternity leave for new fathers and three days per month of paid leave for parents of children with serious special needs, as well as expanded access to other benefits for children through 26 years of age.

The change to paternity leave affects employees of the Roman Curia, and mirrors a change ordered under Pope Francis in January of this year for employees of Vatican City.

The moves brought the Vatican a little more closely into step with Italian employment law and practice.

Italian law requires fathers to take two weeks of paid leave around the time of the birth of their children, in a five-month window starting two months before the due date and running through the three months after a child’s birth. Italian state employees – mothers and fathers – may request up to eleven months of parental leave, the first three of which are paid at 80 percent of base salary and the rest (up to 9 months total) at 30 percent.

A news item from Vatican News announced the changes on Monday, August 11, and said the document implementing the changes was signed by the Economy secretariat’s prefect, Maximino Caballero Ledo and “approved” by Leo.

The document, a rescript, says employees are “entitled to five days of paid leave on the occasion of the birth of a child,” and specifies that the five days, “understood as working days, may be taken consecutively and/or in full-day increments, not in hours, within no more than thirty days from the event, under penalty of forfeiture of the right.”

For families with children “in a situation of certified severity,” the new law entitles parents to “three days of paid leave [each month], which may also be taken consecutively, provided that the child is not fully hospitalized in specialized institutions.”

The new measures also extend family allowances for dependent children “during the period of secondary studies up to the maximum age of 20 years,” and “for the entire duration of university studies or studies recognized as equivalent by the Holy See, up to the maximum age of 26 years.”

That change fills a gap under the old law, according to which children were considered dependents until age 18 unless they were enrolled in university or comparable formative studies, and then only until age 24. In Italy, high school is a five-year program, meaning students are frequently 19 or 20 before finishing.