page_title: Pallium
section_title: Modern use
hierarchical_section_title: Pallium / History / Modern use
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Papst Benedikt XVI., Pfingstmesse im Petersdom, 15. Mai 2005.English: Benedictus XVI in St Peter's Basilica, on May 15th, 2005.
context_page_description: The pallium is an ecclesiastical vestment in the Roman Catholic Church, originally peculiar to the Pope, but for many centuries bestowed by the Holy See upon metropolitans and primates as a symbol of their conferred jurisdictional authorities, and still remains a papal emblem. In its present form, the pallium is a long and "three fingers broad" white band adornment, woven from the wool of lambs raised by Trappist monks. It is donned by looping its middle around one's neck, resting upon the chasuble and two dependent lappets over one's shoulders with tail-ends on the left with the front end crossing over the rear. When observed from the front or rear the pallium sports a stylistic letter 'y'. It is decorated with six black crosses, one near each end and four spaced out around the neck loop. At times the pallium is embellished fore and aft with three gold gem-headed stickpins. The doubling and pinning on the left shoulder likely survive from the Roman pallium. The pallium and the omophor originate from the same vestment, the latter a much larger and wider version worn by Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic bishops of the Byzantine Rite.
context_section_description: The use of the pallium is reserved to the pope and archbishops who are metropolitans, but the latter may not use it until it is conferred upon them by the pope, normally at the celebration of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in June. Pope Francis modified the ritual of conferring the pallium in January 2015: The pallia will be blessed on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul in Saint Peter's Basilica; the metropolitan archbishops, however will receive those pallia in a separate ceremony within their home dioceses from the hands of the Apostolic Nuncio (who is the personal representative of the pope in their respective countries). The pallium is also conferred upon the Latin Rite Patriarch of Jerusalem. Previous traditions that allowed some other bishops to use the pallium were ended by Pope Paul VI in a motu proprio in 1978. A metropolitan archbishop may wear his pallium as a mark of his jurisdiction not only in his own archdiocese but anywhere in his ecclesiastical province whenever he celebrates Mass.
  Although the pallium is now reserved, by law and liturgical norms, to metropolitans, a single standing exception has seemed to become customary: Pope John Paul II conferred a pallium on then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when Ratzinger became Dean of the College of Cardinals and therefore also Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, a purely honorary title and one without an archbishopric or metropolitanate attached. When Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, he continued that exception without comment by conferring the pallium on Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the new dean.
  Worn by the pope, the pallium symbolizes the plenitudo pontificalis officii (i.e., the "plenitude of pontifical office"); worn by archbishops, it typifies their participation in the supreme pastoral power of the pope, who concedes it to them for their proper church provinces. Similarly, after his resignation, he may not use the pallium; should he be transferred to another archdiocese, he must again petition the pope for a new pallium. The new pallia are solemnly blessed after the First Vespers on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and are then kept in a special silver-gilt casket near the Confessio Petri (tomb of St. Peter) until required. The pallium was formerly conferred in Rome by a cardinal deacon, and outside of Rome by a bishop; in both cases the ceremony took place after the celebration of Mass and the administration of an oath. Since the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), the liturgy for the conferral of the pallium as it appears in the liturgical books is to take place at the beginning of the Mass in which the archbishop takes possession of his see; however, the practice of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI has actually been to summon all new metropolitans to Rome to receive the pallium directly from the hands of the pope on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
  For his formal inauguration, Pope Benedict XVI adopted an earlier form of the pallium, from a period when it and the omophor were virtually identical. It is wider than the modern pallium although not as wide as the modern omophor, made of wool with black silk ends, and decorated with five red crosses, three of which are pierced with pins, symbolic of Christ's five wounds and the three nails, and it was worn crossed over the left shoulder. Only the Papal pallium was to take this distinctive form. Beginning with the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (June 29, 2008) Benedict XVI reverted to a form similar to that worn by his recent predecessors, albeit in a larger and longer cut and with red crosses, therefore remaining distinct from pallia worn by metropolitans. This change, explained the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations Guido Marini, came about after recent studies on the history of the pallium, had shown that the oldest depiction of a pope wearing that type of pallium, that of Pope Innocent III at the Sacro Speco Cloister, seemed to be a deliberate archaism. Msgr. Marini also stated that Pope Benedict had had a series of annoying problems keeping it in place during liturgical celebrations.
caption: Pope Benedict XVI in his distinctive papal pallium, prior to 2008
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