Ver­non Khelawan

Three days ago, on the Solem­ni­ty of the Feast of Sts Pe­ter and Paul June 29, the Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain, His Grace Joseph Ever­ard Har­ris was con­ferred with his pal­li­um. The cer­e­mo­ny was held at the Vat­i­can and wit­nessed by a huge crowd, in­clud­ing a con­tin­gent of near­ly three dozen Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans, who made a pil­grim­age es­pe­cial­ly for the oc­ca­sion.

Most prob­a­bly the word pal­li­um, its de­riva­tion, its use and its sym­bol­ism, is a strange one to the or­di­nary Catholic per­son in this coun­try. Wikipedia de­scribes it as an "ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal vest­ment in the Ro­man Catholic Church, orig­i­nal­ly pe­cu­liar to the Pope."

How­ev­er, for many cen­turies now the Pope has be­stowed it on arch­bish­ops and bish­ops as a sym­bol of the ju­ris­dic­tion del­e­gat­ed to them by the Holy See. In that con­text there­fore, it has al­ways re­mained un­am­bigu­ous­ly con­nect­ed to the pa­pa­cy.

Like so many oth­er things in the Catholic Church, this vest­ment has un­der­gone sev­er­al changes and to­day's pal­li­um is a cir­cu­lar band about two inch­es wide, worn about the neck, breast and shoul­ders and hav­ing two pen­dants, one rest­ing on the chest, and the oth­er on the back. The pen­dants are about two inch­es wide and a foot long.

Or­na­men­ta­tion of the pal­li­um con­sists of six small black cross­es-one each on the breast and back, one on each shoul­der and one on each pen­dant. The cross­es on the breast, back and left shoul­der are pro­vid­ed with a loop for the re­cep­tion of a gold pin set with a pre­cious stone. It is made from the wool of a white lamb and worn over the cha­suble.

When the pal­li­um is worn by the Pope, it sym­bol­is­es the plen­i­tude of pon­tif­i­cal of­fice (plen­i­tu­do pon­tif­i­calis of­ficii), and when 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, the dio­ce­ses over which they have some ju­ris­dic­tion.

In 2006, when Pope Bene­dict XVI ad­dressed the met­ro­pol­i­tan arch­bish­ops who had just re­ceived their pal­lia he told them, "The pal­li­um is worn by Arch­bish­ops as a sym­bol of their hi­er­ar­chi­cal com­mu­nion with the Suc­ces­sor of Pe­ter in the gov­er­nance of God's peo­ple. The vest­ment re­minds Bish­ops, as vic­ars of Christ in their lo­cal church­es, that they are called to be shep­herds af­ter the Heart of Je­sus."

An Arch­bish­op who has not re­ceived the pal­li­um may not ex­er­cise any of his func­tions as met­ro­pol­i­tan, nor any met­ro­pol­i­tan pre­rog­a­tives what­ev­er. Even af­ter his res­ig­na­tion, he may not use the pal­li­um. In re­cent his­to­ry, Pope Bene­dict XVI, for his for­mal in­au­gu­ra­tion, opt­ed to use an ear­li­er form of the pal­li­um, from a past pe­ri­od. It is wider than the mod­ern pal­li­um, made of wool with black silken ends and dec­o­rat­ed with five red cross­es, three of which are pierced with pins, sym­bol­ic of Christ's five wounds and the three nails. On­ly the pa­pal pal­li­um has tak­en this dis­tinc­tive form.

The his­to­ry and ori­gin of the pal­li­um is to­day still un­cer­tain, but ac­cord­ing to a doc­u­ment "Liber Pon­tif­i­calis", it was first used in the first half of the fourth cen­tu­ry (d 336). But then in the fifth cen­tu­ry the wear­ing of the pal­li­um had be­come cus­tom­ary. Again in the sixth cen­tu­ry the pal­li­um is men­tioned as a long-cus­tom­ary vest­ment, and even then its use by any­one oth­er than the Pope was tol­er­at­ed on­ly by virtue of the per­mis­sion of the Pope.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od the pal­li­um was con­sid­ered a litur­gi­cal vest­ment to be used on­ly in the church and in­deed on­ly dur­ing holy mass, un­less a spe­cial priv­i­lege was de­ter­mined oth­er­wise. The rules reg­u­lat­ing the orig­i­nal use of the pal­li­um can­not be de­ter­mined with cer­tain­ty, but its use, even be­fore the sixth cen­tu­ry, seems to have had a def­i­nite litur­gi­cal char­ac­ter.

Some trace the ori­gin of the pal­li­um to an in­vesti­ture by Con­stan­tine the Great (or one of his suc­ces­sors); oth­ers con­sid­er it an im­i­ta­tion of the He­brew ephod, the humer­al gar­ment of the high priest. Oth­ers de­clare that its ori­gin is trace­able to a man­tle of St Pe­ter, which was sym­bol­ic of his of­fice as supreme pas­tor.

A fourth hy­poth­e­sis finds its ori­gin in a litur­gi­cal man­tle, which they say was used by ear­ly Popes and which in the course of time was fold­ed in the shape of a band; and a fifth says its ori­gin dates back to the cus­tom of fold­ing the or­di­nary man­tle-pal­li­um, an out­er gar­ment in use in im­pe­r­i­al times. A sixth de­clares that it was in­tro­duced im­me­di­ate­ly as a pa­pal litur­gi­cal gar­ment, which was not at first a nar­row strip of cloth, but as the name sug­gests, a broad, ob­long and fold­ed cloth.

Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel), is the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. Its of­fices are lo­cat­ed at 31 In­de­pen­dence Square. Tele­phone 623-7620.