VATICAN CITY (RNS) When the Vatican announced last month its decision to make it easier for Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, the two high officials who delivered the historic news were both American.

That the nationality of the two men, Cardinal William Levada and Archbishop Joseph Di Noia, didn’t qualify as news shows how widely accepted Americans have become at the top levels of an institution that has historically been dominated by Europeans.

Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco, now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s highest doctrinal authority after the pope. Di Noia holds the No. 2 post at the Congregation for Divine Worship, whose responsibilities include overseeing a new translation of the Mass for use throughout the English-speaking world.

The roster of Americans in leadership positions at the Holy See also includes Archbishop Raymond Burke, head of the Apostolic Signature, the Vatican’s “Supreme Court”; Archbishop James Harvey, who runs the papal household; Mary Ann Glendon, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican who serves as president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; and Monsignor Peter Wells, a top aide to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as Secretary of State is considered the Vatican’s second highest official.

“It would be fair to say that after the Italians, the most important players in Benedict’s papacy are the Americans,” says John L. Allen, Jr., senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and author of “The Future Church.”

The U.S. presence has expanded in less conspicuous ways, too. Five Americans now sit on the Congregation for Bishops, making them the largest non-Italian national bloc within that crucial Vatican body, which vets candidates for the episcopacy. Although Americans compose less than 6 percent of the global Catholic population, they make up 11.5 percent of the cardinal electors, who will choose the next pope.

“And what we’re seeing at the top levels is reflective of middle management,” said the Rev. Robert A. Gahl, Jr., an American who teaches ethics at Rome’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

Gahl also noted that it is increasingly common for rising church leaders from all over the world to study or teach in the U.S. at some point in their careers. For instance, Ghanaian Cardinal Peter K. A. Turkson, head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and currently one of the most celebrated figures in the African Church, attended seminary in Rensselaer, N.Y.

The growing American influence reflects not only the nation’s status as an economic, military and cultural superpower, Gahl said, but also the “energy and youthful vibrancy” of its large Catholic population. Those qualities, he said, stand in contrast to the “growing secularization” that has beset Catholic counties in Europe.

U.S. Catholics are also important for their links to Latin America, one of the church’s most vital areas of growth. “Spanish is the language spoken by the most Catholics in the world today,” Gahl said, noting that American seminarians now typically study Spanish as part of their preparation for the priesthood.

In order to assume such a prominent Vatican role, Americans have had to overcome prejudices inspired by their nation’s Protestant heritage. As Allen has written, Italians and other Europeans at the Holy See have long suspected American Catholics of possessing “Calvinist” traits, including excessive individualism and an inclination to private interpretation of scripture, that might make them unsuitable for leadership in the church. But increased exposure has gradually allayed such concerns, Allen said.

No doubt it helps to have an outspoken admirer in none other than Pope Benedict XVI. The pope has often praised America’s tradition of religious liberty, and in a speech on the White House lawn in April 2008 he voiced his “great respect for this vast pluralistic society,” where “all believers have found … the freedom to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their conscience.”

Despite some concerns over dissent, which have led in recent years to Vatican censure of several well-known American theologians, and to two separate investigations of American nuns, Allen described the pope as bullish on his U.S. flock.

“He sees a Catholic community that’s dynamic, self-confident, loyal to Rome but creative at the same time, with a spirit of entrepreneurial hustle sometimes lacking in European cultures, where Catholicism was for centuries a state-imposed monopoly,” Allen said.

With its deep reverence for tradition and a habit of thinking in centuries, the Vatican might not seem the most hospitable environment for entrepreneurial hustle. And observers say that any changes introduced by American arrivals are likely to be subtle and slow in taking effect.

“Americans are more direct in their communication style,” said Gahl, predicting that papal documents, well-known for their roundabout and often opaque wording, will benefit from American authorship. But Gahl also noted that Americans at the Vatican eventually discover that “circumlocution can be extremely useful.”

Allen agreed that newcomers to the Vatican are more likely to adapt to their environment than to wreak dramatic changes in it.

“Non-Italians in the Vatican are usually fairly quickly italianizzati (“Italianized”),” he said, “so in the short term I wouldn’t expect culture shock.”