ROME — The founder and the entire editorial board have quit a Vatican women’s magazine that has drawn international attention for exposing the abuse of nuns, citing a “climate of distrust and progressive delegitimization” of their work inside the Vatican’s communications office.

In a letter of resignation to Pope Francis, Lucetta Scaraffia, the founder and editor of Women Church World, wrote that the editorial board members, all women, felt in the last few months, that a hierarchy dominated by men was marginalizing them and did not value their work.

“It seems to us that a vital initiative is being reduced to silence, to return to the antiquated and arid method of the top-down selection, under direct male control, of women who are perceived as being reliable,” Ms. Scaraffia wrote in the letter, dated March 21, which was provided to The New York Times. Instead of promoting fruitful discussion, the Vatican preferred to return to a “clerical self-referential” mode, she wrote.

The monthly magazine, published by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, has focused on women’s issues and on the role of women inside the Roman Catholic Church. Recently it had become a forum for revealing and discussing hardships faced by some nuns around the world, including the exploitation of their labor and sexual abuse by priests.