Romano Pontifici Eligendo - Coronation Still Envisaged

Coronation Still Envisaged

When Pope Paul VI revised the regulations governing the election of popes, he had abandoned the wearing of a papal tiara, but he did not eliminate the mention of a coronation of newly elected popes. His successors, Popes John Paul I and John Paul II, who, once elected, were free to alter or dispense from these regulations, chose not to be crowned, and when in 1996 Pope John Paul II issued his Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, he removed from the regulations all mention of a coronation. In his inauguration homily, Pope John Paul II said:

In past centuries, when the Successor of Peter took possession of his See, the triregnum or tiara was placed on his head. The last Pope to be crowned was Paul VI in 1963, but after the solemn coronation ceremony he never used the tiara again and left his Successors free to decide in this regard.

Pope John Paul I, whose memory is so vivid in our hearts, did not wish to have the tiara; nor does his Successor wish it today. 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.

Our time calls us, urges us, obliges us to gaze on the Lord and immerse ourselves in humble and devout meditation on the mystery of the supreme power of Christ himself.