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The Pope wore a vintage cope and mitre for First Vespers this evening.


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The white and gold cope was embroidered with the arms of Pope John XXIII.


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The tall jewelled mitre was made for Pius XII

He wore the pectoral cross with a large central aquamarine.


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The Pope wore this combination last year at Vespers. The morse - and of course the staff - was different. The stole also seems to be different.


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This year a gold morse set with rubies and diamonds held the cope in place.



The Pope walked down the aisle - thankfully no sedia - and there were no jumpers.

He looked very well.



Afterwards the Pope visited the crib in the piazza, wearing a white coat over his cassock, and blessed the crowd gathered there.

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The Pope wore a beautiful gold and white Roman chasuble for Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany with his birthday mitre.


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The cuffs of the alb were plain white lace, rather than the gold or silver which Guido Marini often favours.
Glittery cuffs would have been far too much with this rich chasuble.

It was similar to the gold and white Roman chasuble he sometimes wore as a cardinal.



It is much finer than the rather bland Roman chasuble the Pope has worn at Epiphany in previous years.


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There are no good pictures of the back of the chasuble and no papal arms are visible.


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It seems to match the dalmatics worn by the cardinals who celebrated Mass with the Pope.


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The new staff is so much better than the ungainly Pius IX staff. The Pope looks comfortable holding this staff.

The Pope looked wonderful today - splendid, but also elegant, with everything in proportion. The only jarring note for me is that ugly pallium.

NLM - Address to a Conference for the Year of the Priest, 6 January 2010

I propose to focus on some topics connected to the spirit of the liturgy and reflect on them with you; indeed, I intend to broach a subject which would require me to say much. Not only because it is a demanding and complex task to talk about the spirit of the liturgy, but also because many important works treating this subject have already been written by authors of unquestionably high caliber in theology and the liturgy. I'm thinking of two people in particular among the many: Romano Guardini and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

One the other hand, it is now all the more necessary to speak about the spirit of the liturgy, especially for us members of the sacred priesthood. Moreover, there is an urgent need to reaffirm the "authentic" spirit of the liturgy, such as it is present in the uninterrupted tradition of the Church, and attested, in continuity with the past, in the most recent Magisterial teachings: starting from the second Vatican council up to the present pontificate. I purposefully used the word continuity, a word very dear to our present Holy Father. He has made it the only authoritative criterion whereby one can correctly interpret the life of the Church, and more specifically, the conciliar documents, including all the proposed reforms contained in them. How could it be any different? Can one truly speak of a Church of the past and a Church of the future as if some historical break in the body of the Church had occurred? Could anyone say that the Bride of Christ had lived without the assistance of the Holy Spirit in a particular period of the past, so that its memory should be erased, purposefully forgotten?

Nevertheless at times it seems that some individuals are truly partisan to a way of thinking that is justly and properly defined as an ideology, or rather a preconceived notion applied to the history of the Church which has nothing to do with the true faith.

An example of the fruit produced by that misleading ideology is the recurrent distinction between the preconciliar and the post conciliar Church. Such a manner of speaking can be legitimate, but only on condition that two Churches are not understood by it: one, the pre Conciliar Church, that has nothing more to say or to give because it has been surpassed, and a second, the post conciliar church, a new reality born from the Council and, by its presumed spirit, not in continuity with its past. This manner of speaking and more so of thinking must not be our own. Apart from being incorrect, it is already superseded and outdated, perhaps understandable from a historical point of view, but nonetheless connected to a season in the church's life by now concluded.

Does what we have discussed so far with respect to "continuity" have anything to do with the topic we have been asked to treat in this lecture? Yes, absolutely. The authentic spirit of the liturgy does not abide when it is not approached with serenity, leaving aside all polemics with respect to the recent or remote past. The liturgy cannot and must not be an opportunity for conflict between those who find good only in that which came before us, and those who, on the contrary, almost always find wrong in what came before. The only disposition which permits us to attain the authentic spirit of the liturgy, with joy and true spiritual relish, is to regard both the present and the past liturgy of the Church as one patrimony in continuous development. A spirit, accordingly, which we must receive from the Church and is not a fruit of our own making....

I will not pretend to plumb the depths of the proposed subject matter, nor to treat all the different aspects necessary for a panoramic and comprehensive understanding of the question. I will limit myself by discussing only a few elements essential to the liturgy, specifically with reference to the celebration of the Eucharist, such as the Church proposes them, and in the manner I have learned to deepen my knowledge of them these past two years in service to our Holy Father, Benedict XVI. He is an authentic master of the spirit of the liturgy, whether by his teaching, or by the example he gives in the celebration of the sacred rites.

If, during the course of these reflections on the essence of the liturgy, I will find myself taking note of some behaviours that I do not consider in complete harmony with the authentic spirit of the liturgy, I will do so only as a small contribution to making this spirit stand out all the more in all its beauty and truth.

1. The Sacred Liturgy, God's great gift to the Church.

We are all well aware how the second Vatican Council dedicated the entirety of its first document to the liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium. It was labeled as the Constitution on the sacred liturgy.

I wish to underline the term sacred in its application to the liturgy, because of its importance. As a matter of fact, the council Fathers intended in this way to reinforce the sacred character of the liturgy....

the second Vatican Council affirms: "...every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others..." (Sacrosanctum concilium, n.7)

From this perspective it is not difficult to realise how far distant some modes of conduct are from the authentic spirit of the liturgy. In fact, some individuals have managed to upset the liturgy of the church in various ways under the pretext of a wrongly devised creativity. This was done on the grounds of adapting to the local situation and the needs of the community, thus appropriating the right to remove from, add to, or modify the liturgical rite in pursuit of subjective and emotional ends. For this, we priests are largely responsible.

For this reason, already back in 2001, the former Cardinal Ratzinger asserted: "There is need of, at the very least, of a new liturgical awareness that might put a stop to the tendency to treat the liturgy as if it were an object open to manipulation. We have reached the point where liturgical groups stitch together the Sunday liturgy on their own authority. The result is certainly the imaginative product of a group of able and skilled individuals. But in this way the space where one may encounter the "totally other" is reduced, in which the holy offers Himself as gift; what I come upon is only the skill of a group of people. It is then that we realise that we are looking for something else. It is too little, and at the same time, something different. The most important thing today is to acquire anew a respect for the liturgy, and an awareness that it is not open to manipulation. To learn once again to recognise in its nature a living creation that grows and has been given as gift, through which we participate in the heavenly liturgy. To renounce seeking in it our own self-realisation in order to see a gift instead. This, I believe, is of primary importance: to overcome the temptation of a despotic behaviour, which conceives the liturgy as an object, the property of man, and to re-awaken the interior sense of the holy." (from 'God and the World'; translation from the Italian)

To affirm, therefore, that the liturgy is sacred presupposes the fact that the liturgy does not exist subject to the sporadic modifications and arbitrary inventions of one individual or group. The liturgy is not a closed circle in which we decide to meet, perhaps to encourage one another, to feel we are the protagonists of some feast. The liturgy is God's summons to his people to be in His presence; it is the advent of God among us; it is God encountering us in this world.

A certain adaptation to particular local situations is foreseen and rightly so. The Missal itself indicates where adaptations may be made in some of its sections, yet only in these and not arbitrarily in others.....


I wish to prolong my reflection a moment longer on this point, which, I can testify, is very dear to the Holy Father, by sharing with you a passage from Sacramentum Caritatis, the Apostolic Exhortation of His Holiness, Benedict XVI, written after the Synod on the Holy Eucharist. "Emphasising the importance of the ars celebrandi," the Holy Father writes, "also leads to an appreciation of the value of the liturgical norms... The eucharistic celebration is enhanced when priests and liturgical leaders are committed to making known the current liturgical texts and norms... Perhaps we take it for granted that our ecclesial communities already know and appreciate these resources, but this is not always the case. These texts contain riches which have preserved and expressed the faith and experience of the People of God over its two-thousand-year history." (n. 40)

2. The orientation of liturgical prayer.

Over and above the changes which have characterised, during the course of time, the architecture of churches and the places where the liturgy takes place, one conviction has always remained clear within the Christian community, almost down to the present day. I am referring to praying facing east, a tradition which goes back to the origins of Christianity.

What is understood by "praying facing east"? It refers to the orientation of the praying heart towards Christ, from whom comes salvation, and to whom it is directed as in the beginning so at the end of history. The sun rises in the east, and the sun is a symbol of Christ, the light rising in the Orient. The messianic passage in the Benedictus canticle comes readily to mind: "Through the tender mercy of our God; * whereby the Orient from on high hath visited us"

Very reliable and recent studies have by now proven effectively that, in every age of its past, the Christian community has found the way to express even in the external and visible liturgical sign, this fundamental orientation for the life of faith. This is why we find churches built in such a way that the apse was turned to the east. When such an orientation of the sacred space was no longer possible, the Church had recourse to the Crucifix placed upon the altar, on which everyone could focus. In the same vein many apses were decorated with resplendent representations of the Lord. All were invited to contemplate these images during the celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy.

Without recourse to a detailed historical analysis of the development of Christian art, we would like to reaffirm that prayer facing east, more specifically, facing the Lord, is a characteristic expression of the authentic spirit of the liturgy. It is according to this sense that we are invited to turn our hearts to the Lord during the celebration of the Eucharistic Liturgy, as the introductory dialogue to the Preface well reminds us. Sursum corda "Lift up your hearts," exhorts the priest, and all respond: Habemus ad Dominum "We lift them up unto the Lord." Now if such an orientation must always be adopted interiorly by the entire Christian community when it gathers in prayer, it should be possible to find this orientation expressed externally by means of signs as well. The external sign, moreover, cannot but be true, in such a way that through it the correct spiritual attitude is rendered visible.

Hence the reason for the proposal made by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, and presently reaffirmed during the course of his pontificate, to place the Crucifix on the center of the altar, in order that all, during the celebration of the liturgy, may concretely face and look upon Lord, in such a way as to orient also their prayer and hearts. Let us listen to the words of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, directly, who in the preface to the first book of his Complete Works, dedicated to the liturgy, writes the following: "The idea that the priest and people should stare at one another during prayer was born only in modern Christianity, and is completely alien to the ancient Church. The priest and people most certainly do not pray one to the other, but to the one Lord. Therefore, they stare in the same direction during prayer: either towards the east as a cosmic symbol of the Lord who comes, or, where this is not possible, towards the image of Christ in the apse, towards a crucifix, or simply towards the heavens, as our Lord Himself did in his priestly prayer the night before His Passion (John 17.1) In the meantime the proposal made by me at the end of the chapter treating this question in my work 'The Spirit of the Liturgy' is fortunately becoming more and more common: rather than proceeding with further transformations, simply to place the crucifix at the center of the altar, which both priest and the faithful can face and be lead in this way towards the Lord, whom everyone addresses in prayer together." (trans. from the Italian.)

Let it not be said, moreover, that the image of our Lord crucified obstructs the sight of the faithful from that of the priest, for they are not to look to the celebrant at that point in the liturgy! They are to turn their gaze towards the Lord! In like manner, the presider of the celebration should also be able to turn towards the Lord. The crucifix does not obstruct our view; rather it expands our horizon to see the world of God; the crucifix brings us to meditate on the mystery; it introduces us to the heavens from where the only light capable of making sense of life on this earth comes. Our sight, in truth, would be blinded and obstructed were our eyes to remain fixed on those things that display only man and his works.

In this way one can come to understand why it is still possible today to celebrate the holy Mass upon the old altars, when the particular architectural and artistic features of our churches would advise it. Also in this, the Holy Father gives us an example when he celebrates the holy Eucharist at the ancient altar of the Sistine Chapel on the feast of the Baptism of our Lord.

In our time, the expression "celebrating facing the people" has entered our common vocabulary. If one's intention in using this expression is to describe the location of the priest, who, due to the fact that today he often finds himself facing the congregation because of the placement of the altar, in this case such an expression is acceptable. Yet such an expression would be categorically unacceptable the moment it comes to express a theological proposition. Theologically speaking, the holy Mass, as a matter of fact, is always addressed to God through Christ our Lord, and it would be a grievous error to imagine that the principal orientation of the sacrificial action is the community. Such an orientation, therefore, of turning towards the Lord must animate the interior participation of each individual during the liturgy. It is likewise equally important that this orientation be quite visible in the liturgical sign as well....

. Adoration and union with God.

Adoration is the recognition, filled with wonder, we could even say ecstatic, (because it makes us come out of ourselves and our small world) the recognition of the infinite might of God, of His incomprehensible majesty, and of His love without limit which he offers us absolutely gratuitously, of His omnipotent and provident Lordship. Consequently, adoration leads to the reunification of man and creation with God, to the abandonment of the state of separation, of apparent autonomy, to loss of self, which is, moreover, the only way of regaining oneself.

Before the ineffable beauty of God's charity, which takes form in the mystery of the Incarnate Word, who for our sake has died and is risen, and which finds its sacramental manifestation in the liturgy, there is nothing left for us but to be left in adoration. "In the paschal event and the Eucharist which makes it present throughout the centuries," affirms Pope John Paul II in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, "there is a truly enormous capacity which embraces all of history as the recipient of the grace of the redemption. This amazement should always fill the Church assembled for the celebration of the Eucharist." (n.5)

"My Lord and my God," we have been taught to say from childhood at the moment of the consecration. In such a way, borrowing the words of the apostle St. Thomas, we are led to adore the Lord, made present and living in the species of the holy Eucharist, uniting ourselves to Him, and recognising Him as our all. From there it becomes possible to resume our daily way, having found the correct order of life, the fundamental criterion whereby to live and to die.

Here is the reason why everything in the liturgical act, through the nobility, the beauty, and the harmony of the exterior sign, must be condusive to adoration, to union with God: this includes the music, the singing, the periods of silence, the manner of proclaiming the Word of the Lord, and the manner of praying, the gestures employed, the liturgical vestments and the sacred vessels and other furnishings, as well as the sacred edifice in its entirety. It is under this perspective that the decision of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, is to be taken into consideration, who, starting from the feast of Corpus Christi last year, has begun to distribute holy Communion to the kneeling faithful directly on the tongue. By the example of this action, the Holy Father invites us to render visible the proper attitude of adoration before the greatness of the mystery of the Eucharistic presence of our Lord. An attitude of adoration which must be fostered all the more when approaching the most holy Eucharist in the other forms permitted today.....

Clergy Conference in Rome: Address of Msgr. Guido Marini, Papal Master of Ceremonies

Papal liturgist endorses 'reform of the reform' of the liturgy

The time has come when the Holy Father himself should speak directly to the faithful about the issues which cause contention regarding the liturgy, especially since the arrival of Guido Marini.

Specifically, we need to hear about the orientation of worship and receiving Communion only on the tongue. Cardinal Ratzinger said it was prefectly acceptable to receive Communion in the hand. Has Papa Ratzinger changed his mind on this point? We also need to hear the Pope's views on his original pallium and the liturgical style he allowed to continue for the first three years of his papacy.

A direct statement on these issues would finally end the speculative arguments on what is a consequence of suggestions made by Monsignor Guido Marini and what comes as a directive from the Pope.

It would also be useful to be quite clear on what the ultimate objective is, rather than allowing people to push the idea that the Pope has a gradual "brick by brick" strategy to transforming the way we worship, as is suggested by some pundits.

Many thanks for identifying the antique chasuble AspirantMonk.


David Lees

Also thanks for the link to the article in the Catholic Herald.

It has not changed my mind about the sedia. It is inappropriate and it would remove the Pope from the faithful. I do not believe that he wants that. Although it must sometimes be rather daunting to face that sea of grasping hands, the Pope is a pastor and he does his best to interact with people when he can.

The pictures taken in the basilica after the new security measures were implemented - widening the aisle and having security men at intervals looking at the congregation - clearly show him making an extra special effort to greet the people. He repeatedly crossed from one side of the aisle to the other, kissed and blessed children and took the outstretched hands.


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If he ever takes to the sedia I believe it will only be when he is no longer able to walk the length of the basilica. I hope that day does not arrive and that he will continue to be as sprightly as he is now.

This is a fascinating piece from a woman who grew up during the changes which followed Vatican II.
She is Elizabeth Scalia who writes a blog as The Anchoress

Inside Catholic - A magnificently voiced organ and the clear treble of the girl's choir combined to sound like angels from on high. The billowing incense seemed to charge the church interior with holiness and mystery, and we knew our innocent prayers would be swiftly borne up to heaven on those spicy, fragrant clouds.
The priests and altar boys wore festive, gorgeous red beneath their impeccably starched or delicately laced surplices, and all around us was beauty, joy, order, meaning, mystery -- and something else: a sense of confident and grave purpose.

At this first Holy Communion, circa mid-1960s, we girls in identical veils and the boys in their blue suits, genuflected before entering our pews, and believed ourselves embarked upon a well-plotted journey with few surprises in store. Before us was an altar. A priest -- his back to us -- performed a sacrifice. We did not fully grasp all of it, but we understood sacrifices were pleasing to God; we comprehended that even though this spring day was "about us," we were taking part in something vastly larger than ourselves. Schooled in reverence by dedicated sisters, we knew we would kneel in turn at the altar rail, respond "Amen" to the proffered declaration "the Body of Christ," and then self-consciously stick out our tongues. Thus, we would receive into ourselves -- through a great and holy Mystery of God -- the real, physical Body of Christ, the God-man on the cross who fed the multitudes with bread. Now, He would feed us of Himself.

Returning to our seats, allowing the Sacred Host to melt within our mouths, we had been instructed to speak in secret to Jesus the deepest longings of our hearts, to thank Him, to make Him welcome.

I knelt at my seat, thanking and welcoming Jesus, as I'd been taught, and suddenly I was in the grip of something I had never felt before -- an indescribable sweetness, an overwhelming sense of . . . what, exactly? I could not have then articulated the ringing sense, deep within myself, of "holy, holy, holy" like the peal of a bell. It vibrated up from my core, powerful enough to bring tears, and I did not hide them. I was not alone; beside me a pretty strawberry-blonde named Aileen also wept. Hearing her sniffles, I turned my head and we exchanged soggy smiles in perfect understanding. Something beautiful had happened, and everything leading up to it within the preceding hour -- the music, the reverence, the bowed heads of our parents, the precision of the altar boys and the seriousness of the priests -- had contributed to this singular moment, and had reinforced it, too.

Afterwards, still sobbing, I was led away from my classmates by Sr. Mary Alice, my second-grade teacher, who knelt before me and asked what was wrong.

"Sister, you have to make me repeat the second grade!" I told her.

"But why, dear?" She asked.

"Because I want to do that again!" I wailed. "And I can only make first Holy Communion in the second grade!"

Sister assured me that, while I could only make my first Holy Communion once, I could now receive Jesus in the Eucharist "every Sunday -- every day if you want! You will always have this -- the Mass and Holy Communion!"

On that cloudless day, "you will always have this" seemed like a promise one could take to the bank. After all, "this" had been going on, more or less unchanged, for 2,000 years. Taking that into consideration, I was somewhat mollified.

How did it happen, then, that a short time later I found my favorite childhood hymn ("Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creaaaaaation") replaced by a congregational rendering of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," our doubtful voices urged on by a swaying man wearing blue jeans and strumming a guitar? Why was our priest preaching, not about sacraments or sin or salvation, but about the wisdom of Paul Simon's Mrs. Robinson, which told us that -- coo-coo-catchoo -- Jesus loved us more than we knew?

Talk about having a rug pulled out from under you. Seemingly overnight, the genuflections were passe, the organ was silenced and its loft emptied. The chants, which had brought chills and stillness -- even to us children -- were forgotten. The altar rails were down, the women's heads uncovered, the sisters mostly gone, and our priests were facing us at a "table." The Holy Mass that had so recently moved Aileen and me to ecstatic tears had suddenly become unrecognizable, and almost nothing about these changes was explained.

I was a grown woman before a kind priest told me that the lifting of the Friday ban on meat was not -- as I had come to think of it -- the equivalent of a doctrinal tooth extraction that replaced something with nothing and left a gaping hole in my understanding. Who knew that the Council's intent was to free the faithful to choose their own, more personally meaningful -- and therefore more worthwhile -- sacrifice to perform on Fridays, in remembrance of Good Friday? .....



For those of us whose religious formation was transitional, the implementations of Council recommendations were successive earthquakes and aftershocks, inflicting huge cracks upon our foundations. We, who had only begun to absorb and appreciate our Catholic identities and traditions before everything changed, have been straddling a spiritual chasm ever since. One foot catches on the pre-Vatican II soil of tradition, vertical worship, mystical awe, and order. Maybe, we concede, it was a bit sterile and distant; perhaps there was a little too much order. Our other foot is planted post-conciliar, amid informality and determined outreach. It's warmer, more accessible, and less exalted, but -- well, it's less exalted. We stare into the breech and wonder if the attractive bits we see lingering on both ragged edges can somehow be brought together.

A few years ago a "cuspy" Catholic neighbor and I, exchanging memories of the Tridentine liturgy and bemoaning the sort of knockabout, sloppy Masses we had been suffering through, decided to attend an "Old Rite" Mass in the area. We came away from it feeling surprisingly less satisfied than we had hoped. The Mass was beautiful, indeed, reverent and purposeful, but "I didn't like his back being to us," my friend complained; "I couldn't understand a word he was saying, and I felt like he didn't care whether we were there or not!"

"I didn't like the head covering," I admitted, "it distracted me and I wanted to pull it off."

"But still, I liked kneeling to receive the Eucharist," she said.

"Yes, and the silence after Communion. You never hear Holy Silence at Mass anymore."

"Yeah, but I hated not making the responses. I forgot that the altar boys did that . . ."

Perhaps our memory nags us into craving more than we actually want.

We drove home imagining the "perfect" Mass. It would be the Novus Ordo, after all, but with a more inspired, less horizontal translation. There would be more "The Church's One Foundation" and less hand-clapping. The Eucharistic responses would be in Latin -- "and," said my friend, "if after all these years, someone can't compose a singable Gloria that doesn't plod, let's just go back to chanting it, can we, please?

The Novus Ordo isn't going anywhere, but many Catholics who appreciate its music, relaxed standards, and the dicey creativity of parish liturgists are wary of Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum. They worry that the "traditionalists" who have longed for greater availability of the Tridentine Rite and more traditional worship will try to inflict what they perceive to be dead forms onto the newer Mass.

In truth, their worries, while probably excessive, are not baseless. Many Catholics perceive over-corrections within post-conciliar liturgies and devotions, and the pendulum is, predictably, swinging back. The weaknesses of the vernacular translations of the Mass, particularly from Latin to English, have been recognized and are being addressed. Bishops are gently discouraging the liturgical excesses that a decade ago affected a great deal of Catholic worship and often led to eye-rolling in the pews and angry letters to the Vatican. Most notably, there is an increasing trend among Catholics -- particularly young Catholics, who got a taste of a fuller, more solemn liturgy with the funeral mass of Pope John Paul II -- to seek out the so-called Old Latin Rite. Summorum Pontificum is Pope Benedict's happy recommendation that their bishops oblige them in their desires, but whether the promotion of the 1962 Missal and a greater availability of that Mass has any discernable effect on the primacy of the Novus Ordo remains to be seen. For those of us raised in a religious environment that was half Tridentine and half free-for-all, I suspect we will continue to straddle the chasm.

It is doubtful that the re-emergence of the Old Rite will bring a large number of us cuspers back to it, but interest in the Tridentine Mass might actually benefit the Novus Ordo. It may restore some equilibrium to those self-indulgent liturgists who have come to believe that any old thing they can come up with must be a better option than what worked for 2,000 years. A return to seriousness and an appreciation of what came before could help strengthen liturgy that has been too long unsettled (and as the liturgy goes, so goes the worship). In that case, Summorum Pontificum could be a win/win for everyone.....

On the Cusp of Something Great

Zenit - Interview With Consultor for Pontifical Liturgies

Attentive viewers have seen a series of subtle changes in papal liturgies during the five years of Benedict XVI's pontificate.
Father Mauro Gagliardi, consultor to the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, says these changes are inspired by a mix of factors -- oftentimes practicality, sometimes a renewal of ancient traditions.

ZENIT spoke with Father Gagliardi about some of the "new" elements introduced by the current Bishop of Rome.

ZENIT: In a recent article by Luigi Accattoli, "Il rito del silenzio secondo papa Ratzinger" (The Rite of Silence According to Pope Ratzinger) (Liberal, Dec. 1, 2009, p. 10), there emerges the idea of a certain effort, solicited by the Holy Father himself, to bring the papal liturgy more in line with tradition.

Father Gagliardi: Accattoli's article presents a nice overview of some of the more visible changes in recent decisions regarding the pontifical liturgy, even if [he leaves out] others, which were probably not mentioned for the sake of brevity or because they are more difficult for the general public to grasp. This well known and esteemed Vaticanista often repeats that these changes are more or less inspired by the Holy Father himself, who, as everyone knows, is an expert in the liturgy.

ZENIT: Accattoli begins his panorama mentioning the papal vestments that had been eliminated in recent decades: the camauro, the red saturno, the mozzetta with ermine trim. He also notes changes in respect to the pallium.

Father Gagliardi: These are different elements proper to the attire of the Pontiff, as are the red shoes, not explicitly mentioned [by Accattoli]. If it is true that in recent decades the Supreme Pontiffs have chosen not to use these vestments, or to modify their style, it is also true that they have never been abolished and so every Pope can use them.

It should not be forgotten that, like most of the visible elements of the liturgy, non-liturgical clothing has both a practical and symbolic necessity.

I remember when the Holy Father first used the camauro -- a winter cap that protects against the cold -- a well known Italian weekly carried the smiling face of the Holy Father, who had just put the camauro on his head, and under the photo added the caption: "Good thinking!" -- referring to the fact that even the Pope has a right to protect himself from the cold.

But there are not just practical reasons. We cannot forget who the person is who wears these clothes and the role he plays: The [clothes] have a symbolic value too, which is expressed in their beauty and their special décor.

The pallium is a different case; it is a piece of liturgical attire. John Paul II used the same kind of pallium as the metropolitans. At the beginning of Benedict XVI's pontificate, a different style of pallium was made for him, one that was of a more ancient form, which he used for some time. After careful study, it was seen that it was preferable to return to the style used by John Paul II, even though small modifications were made to render clearly notable the difference between the pallium of the metropolitans -- bestowed by the Holy Father -- and the pallium of the Supreme Pontiff. Further information about this can be found in a June 26, 2008, interview in L'Osservatore Romano with Monsignor Guido Marini, the master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations.

ZENIT: What can you tell us about the ferula (papal cross) chosen by Benedict XVI in place of the crucifix made by the sculptor Scorzelli, which was used by Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II, and even by Benedict himself until recently?

Father Gagliardi: You could say that the same principle is at work here. There is a practical reason: Benedict XVI's present pastoral staff, which he began using at the beginning of this liturgical year, weighs more than 590 grams less than Scorzelli's crucifix -- so more than half a kilo (1.3 pounds), which is not a small difference. There is also a historical element: The staff in the form of a cross is more faithful to the staff that is typical of the Roman tradition, that is, the one used by the Supreme Pontiffs, which has always been in the form of a cross without the corpus. On the other hand, here too one could add other reflections from a symbolic and aesthetic perspective.....

In regard to celebrations facing the crucifix, we see that normally the Holy Father is maintaining the so-called "versus popolum" position both in St. Peter's and elsewhere. He has celebrated facing the crucifix only a few times, in particular, in the Sistine Chapel and in the Pauline Chapel, which has been recently renovated. Since the celebration of every Mass, whatever the celebrant's physical position, is a celebration toward the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit and never "versus populum" or the assembly, save for the few moments of dialogue, it is not strange that the celebrant of the Eucharist can also physically position himself "toward the Lord." Especially in the Sistine Chapel, where the altar is against the wall, it is natural and faithful to the norms to celebrate on the fixed and dedicated altar, thus turned toward the crucifix, rather than adding a free-standing altar for the occasion.

Finally, in regard to the way of distributing Holy Communion to the faithful, one needs to distinguish the aspect of receiving it kneeling from that of receiving it on the tongue. In the actual ordinary form of the Roman Rite -- or the Mass of Paul VI -- the faithful have a right to receive Communion standing or kneeling. If the Holy Father has decided to have communicants kneel, I think -- obviously this is only my personal opinion -- that he holds this to be the more appropriate posture to express the sense of adoration that we must always cultivate before the gift of the Eucharist. It is an aid that the Pope gives to those who receive Communion from him, which helps them to consider attentively who He is who is received in the most holy Eucharist.

On the other hand, in "Sacramentum Caritatis," citing St. Augustine, the Holy Father recalled that in receiving the Eucharistic Bread we must adore it, because we would sin if we received it without adoring it. Before receiving Communion, the priest himself genuflects before the Host -- why not help the faithful cultivate the sense of proper adoration through a similar gesture?

In regard to Communion in the hand, it must be remembered that this is possible in many places today -- possible but not obligatory -- but that it is, and remains, a concession, a dispensation from the ordinary norm that affirms that Communion is received on the tongue.

Benedict XVI's "Novel" Traditions