Universi Dominici Gregis - Major Changes

Major Changes

Three major changes occurred in the new Apostolic Constitution.

• Provision was provided for the election of a pope by an absolute majority in certain circumstances.

• For the first time in centuries cardinals were to be provided with an official set of apartments separate from the Sistine Chapel.

• The method by which a pope symbolically took office was made less specific. Whereas Pope Paul's Romano Pontifici Eligendo explicitly required that the new pope be crowned, the new Apostolic Constitution wrote more ambiguously of the inauguration of the pontificate without spelling out specifically by name whether than inaugurating (i.e., formal ceremonial beginning of) the pontificate involves either the old enthronement ceremony, the Papal Coronation or the version used since 1978, the Papal Inauguration. All that is required is that some formal ceremony take place. What form that takes is left up to the discretion of the incoming pope.