In the book “A Reporter at the Papal Court,” published in 1937, Thomas B. Morgan, then the head of The United Press bureau in Rome wrote that Pope Pius XI’s inauguration ceremony in 1922 had been “more dazzling and colorful” that the coronation of the king of England.
One wow factor would have been the moment of the coronation of the pope. From the 12th century until Paul VI stopped using a papal crown in 1964, the installation Mass included a solemn moment when the pontiff was crowned with an elaborate gold and jewel-encrusted tiara.
The pope would not wear the tiara during liturgical ceremonies “but only when entering and exiting certain solemn ceremonies,” said Rev. Stefano Sanchirico, co-author of a book on papal rituals.
Paul VI stopped using the tiara and chose to wear a miter instead, as his successors have done. The papal tiara ended up in the United States, where it is now in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
In his homily during his inauguration Mass on Oct. 22, 1978, Pope John Paul II noted that popes had been crowned in the past, but said the focus should be elsewhere. “This is not the time to return to a ceremony and an object considered, wrongly, to be a symbol of the temporal power of the Popes,” he said.
Archival footage offers a glimpse of the grandeur of the ceremony. A 1939 film that includes the coronation of Pope Pius XII shows crowds roaring in St. Peter’s Square, as he was carried on an elevated throne through the atrium of the basilica. The pope then moved to a balcony and was crowned.
A film of the coronation of Pope John XXIII in 1958 shows him being crowned, with the narrator proclaiming him: “The vicar of Christ on earth.”
Doing away with the crown was not the only way in which Paul VI looked to open the church to the modern world: He also moved the ceremony outside to the area in front of the basilica, where was carried through the crowd on a raised throne by sediari, a lay brotherhood that still has a role in the Vatican — they were the pallbearers who carried Pope Francis’ coffin.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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