In an Italian-language chirograph dated November 6 and released November 13, Pope Leo XIV established the Apostleship of the Sea as a canonical legal entity to supervise the Opus Apostolatus Maris (Work of Apostleship of the Sea), which received Vatican approval in 1922.
Praedicate Evangelium, the 2022 apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, entrusted the Work of Apostleship of the Sea to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. The apostolate “provides for the specific pastoral care of the ‘people of the sea,’ that is, sailors, seafarers and their families, as well as other people whose lives are existentially linked to navigation and fishing on the seas, rivers and lakes,” the Pope wrote in his chirograph.