Pope declares ‘I am Roman' as he completes formalities to become bishop of Rome
Pope Leo declared himself a Roman as he completed the final ceremonial steps cementing his role as the bishop of Rome.
The first American pope was formally taking possession of two papal basilicas in the Eternal City, a formality that serves to ceremonially introduce Leo to his Roman flock, on Sunday.
Advertisement
One of the many titles that Leo assumed when he was elected on May 8 was bishop of Rome.
Pope Leo is greeted by Rome's mayor Roberto Gualtieri at the foot of Capitoline Hill, in Rome (Riccardo De Luca/AP)
Given his responsibilities running the 1.4-billion strong universal Catholic Church, popes delegate the day-to-day governance of running of the diocese of Roman to a vicar.
Sunday's ceremonies at the St John Lateran and St Mary Major basilicas follow Leo's visit last week to the St Paul Outside the Walls basilica.
Together with St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, the four papal basilicas are the most important basilicas in the West.
Advertisement
Rome's mayor Roberto Gualtieri welcomed Leo first at the steps to city hall, noting that his May 8 election fell during a Holy Year, an event occurring every 25 years to invite pilgrims to Rome.
The city underwent two years of traffic-clogging public works projects to prepare and expects to welcome upwards of 30 million people in 2025.
Leo said he felt the 'serious but passionate responsibility' to serve all Romans during the Holy Year and beyond.
Pope Leo is greeted by Rome's mayor Roberto Gualtieri at the foot of Capitoline Hill, in Rome (Riccardo De Luca/AP)
Wearing his formal papal garb, Leo recalled the words he had uttered from the loggia of St Peter's Basilica on the night of his election.
Advertisement
The Augustinian pope quoted St Augustine in saying: 'With you I am Christian, and for you, bishop.'
'By special title, today I can say that for you and with you I am Roman!' he said.
Leo, 69, the former Robert Prevost, replaced Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, who died April 21 and is buried at St Mary Major, near a beloved icon of the Madonna.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Pope Leo appeals for 'reason' amid Israel-Iran airstrikes, calls for dialogue
VATICAN CITY, June 14 (Reuters) - Pope Leo appealed on Saturday for authorities in Iran and Israel to act with "reason" after recent airstrikes and to pursue dialogue. He told an audience in St. Peter's Basilica he was following the situation with "great concern." "In such a delicate moment, I strongly wish to renew an appeal to responsibility and to reason," said the pope. "The commitment to building a safer world free from the nuclear threat must be pursued through respectful encounters and sincere dialogue to build a lasting peace, founded on justice, fraternity, and the common good," he said. "No one should ever threaten the existence of another," said Leo. "It is the duty of all countries to support the cause of peace, initiating paths of reconciliation and promoting solutions that guarantee security and dignity for all."
Telegraph
18 hours ago
- Telegraph
Sir Keir's Italian love affair
World leaders gathering at the G7 next week in Canada tend to have a soft spot for Italy's Giorgia Meloni, and it seems that Sir Keir Starmer is no exception. When ministers receive gifts worth more than £140, they can choose to pay the difference or hand them over to the Exchequer. Government documents reveal that Starmer – a devoted Gunners fan – chose not to stump up the cash to pay for a gifted replica trophy and football shirt he was given by legendary Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger. Yet he paid for a hamper costing more than £140 handed to him by Meloni in April. Truly a new rapporto speciale has begun. The PM and Queenie Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer kindly offered me condolences after our beloved 18-year-old terrier Queenie died this week. 'I was sorry to hear about your dog,' he said, before I interviewed him for GB News. 'Poor old Larry is not looking so good this morning – he is 17,' the PM added, referring to Downing Street's legendary cat. Keep going Larry! Pint of the usual Nigel Farage has popped into the Talbot pub in Blackpool – the UK's first ever pub devoted to his party Reform UK – to have a pint of its new Pilsner lager called Remainer Tears (£2.20 a pint). Pub co-owner Pete Flynn says: 'It refreshes the parts that other beers cannot get to.' The pub has been offering a meal deal of gammon, egg and chips, with a pint of Remainer Tears, for a fiver. A true Brexit dividend! Jail break Claire Hanna, the SDLP MP, billed the taxpayer for a visit to a jail-themed escape room in April last year, at a cost of £240. The activity centre – Belfast's Prison Island – is apparently 'like an escape room only better', offering 31 prison-themed challenges in purpose- built cells, requiring a combination of 'intellectual, technical and physical skills'. It was presumably a team building exercise but is this a solution to the prison overcrowding crisis? Tony's sliding doors Ex-Spandau Ballet lead singer Tony Hadley has revealed what he would be if he weren't a pop star. 'Orthopaedic surgeon,' he tells Devon Life magazine. 'I'm not squeamish – I even wanted to watch my own knee op. But I wasn't good enough at maths to do it.' Brutal end Actor Robert Glenister was inspired to tread the boards when he saw the great Alan Howard's starring role in a 1978 production of Coriolanus by the Royal Shakespeare Company, at London's Aldwych Theatre. 'Later on I was lucky enough to work with him twice,' he says. 'The first time was when I murdered him in an episode of Midsomer Murders. I said: 'You're one of the reasons I wanted to become an actor.' And then whacked him over the head.' Sleep's dance Former dancer Wayne Sleep has shed light on when he taught Princess Diana to dance to Billy Joel's Uptown Girl at the Royal Opera House in London in December 1985. 'When I first met her at the Palace she was in a pink leotard, leg warmers and jazz shoes,' he said at Crazy Coqs cabaret in Piccadilly. 'When we did the dance for Charles, I told her she would have to bow to the Royal Box and she said 'I am not bowing to him. He is my hubby.' I had to bow. As we went off stage she said 'You won't get your OBE that way'.' Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave a copy of her Commons speech to her opposite number Mel Stride before the Spending Review this week, as is custom. Sadly for Stride, much of it was redacted, presumably for reasons of market sensitivity. Is this how to hide a fiscal black hole? The Sex Pistol of politics John Lydon – formerly Johnny Rotten in the punk band the Sex Pistols says that Donald Trump is 'probably a bad man' but he is what the US needs. He told the The Michael Anthony Show podcast: 'The business of America is broke and you need a businessman in to fix it... If you lived the past four years in America, the Democrat party ran the country into the ground. Trump is a wrecking ball. You might loathe him as a human being but he shakes up the s----dom. Business as usual is not working. I said years ago that Trump is the Sex Pistols of politics.'
The Independent
19 hours ago
- The Independent
Pope Leo's changes to the papal wardrobe considered a ‘return to form'
When Pope Leo XIV made his first appearance on the central loggia of St. Peter's Basilica after his May 8 election, he made a statement. The 69-year-old wore a red satin mozzetta shoulder cape and a burgundy stola, complete with gold embroidery and a gold cross suspended from a double-stranded silken gold cord, a departure from his predecessor Pope Francis 's simpler style of a white cassock and silver cross. Over Leo's first few weeks, the excitement grew among liturgical fashion-conscious Catholics as they noticed new additions to the wardrobe, or rather a return to the old additions of the papal wardrobe: cufflinks, white pants, lace. After Francis' revolutionary papacy, Vatican watchers are now wondering if Leo's return to the past sartorial look means a return to the past on other things too, including more substantial policy issues. But for tailors at the elite handful of liturgical tailoring shops in Rome, there is hope that Leo's return to the fancier garb of popes past will mean a boon to business if Leo's traditional look has a trickle-down effect from the pope to priests and all those in between. The style is a return to form According to the Rev. John Wauck, professor of church communication at the Pontifical Holy Cross University in Rome, Leo's clothing choices are a 'return to form,' and his attire similar to that worn by Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and other popes going back to the Middle Ages. They show 'a respect for tradition,' he said. Such respect for the papal office is important for many conservative Catholics. Many conservatives and traditionalists soured on Francis' informal style and disdain for tradition, which reached its pinnacle with his crackdown on the old Latin Mass. The old liturgy was celebrated before the modernising reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council; Francis greatly restricted access to the old liturgy, saying it had become a source of division in parishes. Leo has shown strong familiarity with Latin and has taken to singing the Sunday noontime prayer in Latin. Some traditionalist Catholics are hoping Leo will take the pro-Latin path even further and reverse Francis to allow greater use of the traditional Latin Mass. Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology at Villanova University, where Leo went to college, said it's too early to tell if Leo will reverse Francis' reform. 'It remains to be seen if Leo's more traditional attire and liturgical style mean that he will change Francis' strong decisions limiting the so-called 'Latin Mass,'" he said. That said, Faggioli said U.S. conservatives seem particularly happy with Leo's traditional attire, given Francis' disdain for the fashion pomp of the papacy. 'In this sense, Francis might have been a parenthesis or an interlude, more than a changer of the tradition in 'papal style,'' he said in an email. Leo has made other changes, too At his inaugural Mass on May 18, Pope Leo XIV reached out his arm to sprinkle holy water and revealed a shirt with cufflinks, which Francis had largely avoided. He was also wearing an amitto and an alb held in place by a cingulum. For the non-experts, the amitto is a lacy linen cloth that goes around the neck, the alb is the white tunic worn under the ceremonial vestment, and the cingulum is a braided rope with tassels that serves as a belt. If it weren't for photographers' long lenses relentlessly trained on the pope's every gesture, Leo's switch from Francis's standard black pants to more traditional white papal trousers would have gone completely unnoticed. In addition to the clothing changes, Leo has returned to some other traditions of the Vatican that Francis eschewed. He has shown himself willing to accept the traditional 'baciamano' or kissing of his ring. Francis disliked having his ring kissed and often pulled his hand away if someone tried to kiss it. 'I think that what we see with Pope Leo is a willingness to embrace tradition, even if it risks seeming perhaps more formal than Pope Francis,' Wauck said. The idea is that 'seeing that tradition as a treasure to be conserved and embraced as opposed to something that makes one feel perhaps a little bit standoffish.' It remains to be seen whether Leo will move into the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace, which stood empty during the 12-year Francis papacy. Francis shocked the world by choosing to live in a small room at the Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, eating his meals in the common dining room. For the Rev. Castro Prudencio, this is all much ado about nothing. "For Pope Francis, it was simplicity. Always. And Pope Leo has taken up what Pope Benedict had and many others. That is what the church is like,' he said.
