Beginning on 6 January, Pope Leo XIV has made use of a new pastoral staff which, as explained by the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, “stands in continuity” with those used by his predecessors, uniting the mission of proclaiming the mystery of Christ on the Cross with the glorious manifestation of the Resurrection.
Vatican News
On 6 January, the Solemnity of the Epiphany and the closing of the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo XIV made use of a new pastoral staff.
As explained by the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff, the staff “stands in continuity with those used by his predecessors, uniting the mission of proclaiming the mystery of love expressed by Christ on the Cross with its glorious manifestation in the Resurrection.”
“The Paschal Mystery, the gravitational center of the apostolic proclamation, thus becomes a motive of hope for humanity, because death no longer has any power over mankind, since what Christ has assumed He has also redeemed,” read the note.
The pastoral staff of Pope Leo XIV “presents Christ no longer bound by the nails of the Passion, but with His glorified body in the act of ascending to the Father. As in the appearances of the Risen Lord, He shows His wounds to His own as luminous signs of victory, which, while not erasing human suffering, transfigure it into the dawn of divine life.”
The Office for the Liturgical Celebrations further recalled that the pastoral staff, as an episcopal insignia, “was never among the proper insignia of the Roman Pontiff.
From the High Middle Ages, Popes made use of the ferula pontificalis, an insignia indicating their spiritual authority and governance. Although the form of the ferula is not precisely defined, it was probably a staff surmounted by a simple cross. Popes received this insignia after their election, when they took possession of their Cathedra in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran.”
The use of the ferula, however, “was never part of papal liturgy, except on certain occasions, such as the opening of the Holy Door, to knock three times upon its panels, or during the consecration of churches, to trace on the floor the Latin and Greek alphabets prescribed by the rite.”
It was Pope Saint Paul VI who, on 8 December 1965, on the occasion of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, used a silver ‘pastoral staff’ bearing the figure of the Crucified Christ.
The sculptor Lello Scorzelli, to whom the work was commissioned, sought thereby to express the vocation of the Apostle Paul—whose name the Pope had chosen to bear—namely, that of being a witness and herald of Christ crucified (cf. 1 Cor 2:2).
Pope Saint Paul VI, no longer making use of the ferula, began to employ this pastoral cross with increasing frequency in liturgical celebrations, as his successors would habitually do thereafter.
One memorable gesture was made by Pope St. John Paul II, who, at the beginning of his Petrine ministry, raised the pastoral cross to indicate the very center of his Magisterium, already proclaimed in his homily: “Open wide the doors to Christ.”
Pope Benedict XVI likewise chose to use a pastoral staff surmounted by a golden cross, previously used by Blessed Pius IX, and later one given to him which bore at the center of the cross the symbol of the Paschal Lamb and the monogram of Christ, as a representation of the unity of the mystery of the Cross and the Resurrection, the very heart of the apostolic kerygma.
