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Saturday, 7 May 2005

The newly elected pope, often referred to as a traditionalist, has just broken with a millennial ceremonial tradition. His predecessors, whenever possible, would take possession of the church of St. John in Lateran ten days after their coronation as pope in St. Peter’s, traveling in elaborate procession from the Vatican to the Lateran. The symbolic importance of this much publicized procession (called the Possesso) rested in the fact that, as an inscription on the façade of St. John’s refers to this 4th century basilica, it is “MATER ET CAPUT OMNIA ECCLESIA” (Mother and Head of all churches). Only after moving in state from the Vatican to the Lateran and taking possession of episcopal throne in St. John’s did a newly elected pope become the Bishop of Rome. Being Bishop of Rome meant being the nominal ruler of the city. While this was often an empty title in the medieval period, by the renaissance the popes had become firmly established as the actual secular rulers of Rome.

When Rome was absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, and became its capital, the pope at the time (Pius IX Mastai-Ferretti) would not reconcile himself to his lost powers and became the first of the self-proclaimed “Prisoners of the Vatican,” never issuing out into the state with which he was technically still at war. Thus his four successors (Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI) were not able to go on the Possesso procession. But in 1929 Mussolini as dictator of Italy signed the Lateran Pact with Pius XI which was in effect the peace treaty between Italy and the pope.

Every new pope since that time (Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II) went on the Possesso, to the acclaim of thousands of bystanders. This author followed two of these processions in 1977: those of John Paul I and John Paul II (by bicycle!). The pope rode in an open car moving slowly from the Vatican to the Lateran, following as closely as possible the old processional route once known significantly as the Via Papale. [MAP] Only one stop was made, at the foot of the ramp leading up to the Campidoglio (Capitoline hill). Since the middle ages, the palace at the top of this hill has been the seat of the official who now bears the title of mayor of Rome. As the papal automobile stopped, the mayor, wearing his tricolor sash of office, came down the ramp and paid his respects to the new pope, who reciprocated with a few well-chosen words.

In the renaissance, when the popes were the actual rulers of the city, the procession would go up the great ramp to Michelangelo’s piazza del Campidoglio and then descend to the Roman Forum on another long ramp leading to the triumphal arch of the emperor Septimius Severus. While it is possible for cars to go over the Capitoline hill, the modern processions did not do so, but went around it. This was a clear reference to the fact that the pope was no longer the ruler of Rome. The renaissance processions passed under the arch of Septimius, just as the ancient emperors had done in their triumphal processions, and crossing the Forum and passing through the arch of the emperor Titus, would reach the Colosseum. Since the Forum is now an archeological area not traversed by a car road, modern processions moved along the parallel Via dei Fori Imperiali to reach the Colosseum. From there a long straight street built expressly for these processions by Sixtus V leads directly to the Lateran.

On Saturday, 7 May 2005, Benedict XVI broke with this long tradition. He did indeed travel by car to the Lateran, but he did so almost secretly, and not along the old papal processional route. At 5:15 pm he issued out of a side gate of the Vatican city in a closed car and escorted by 16 motorcycle police drove rapidly and anonymously to the Lateran which he reached less than ten minutes later, along a path that went nowhere near the old Via Papale. Repeated inquiries on the preceding days at the official Vatican information office yielded neither the time of his departure nor the route that he would take. Evidently the Great Justifier of the second millennium, “Security,” was in control, and 9/11’s shadow has also reached the Vatican.

Certainly the new pope did take possession of the Lateran, officiating in a two-hour long high mass. But in former times the procession itself was an integral part of the ceremony, as witnessed by the different routes taken to and from the Lateran, so that people in different parts of the city could experience this impressive spectacle. Giving a nod to this aspect, after the mass, Benedict XVI left the Lateran at 7:15 pm and traveled in an open car to the nearby basilica of S. Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major). This too was unprecedented: no pope had done this before him. There is no historic or symbolic justification for the replacement of the Vatican-Lateran link with the Lateran-S. Maria Maggiore one.

A significant and fascinating millennial tradition has been abandoned, and a meaningless one has been put in its place.

CB ed.