Bravissimo, Papa Leone!

The Corpus Christi Procession of 2025 departing the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano

 

 

 

My theme today is a little off topic, in that it concerns an event that has just happened,  but which opened up links to past art and traditions.   

 

Sunday, June 22, 2025 was the feast of Corpus Christi or, in English, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ and on that day something remarkable happened in Rome.  The new pope, Pope Leo XIV, walked in the procession, carrying that same Body and Blood.

 

The Corpus Christi procession in Rome has a long history, much of it attested by documentation, in both writing and painting.  For example, here is a depiction of a procession from 1546 by Giulio Clovio, a pupil of the painter Giulio Romano, who was the most important pupil of Raphael.  Underneath the canopy, which can be seen slightly to the left of center near the bottom of the pages, is a priest with a monstrance, followed by the pope who is carried aloft in the sedia gestatoria, an elevated throne that last saw use in the mid-1960s.

Guilio Clovio, Papal Procession
From the Farnese Hours
Italian, (Rome), 1546
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M 69, fol. 72v-73r

Following the unification of Italy, which saw the popes stripped of the territories known as the Papal States, and the establishment of Rome as the capital of the new kingdom (later republic) of Italy, there was a period during which the popes confined their public appearances to the area around Saint Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Palace, and to the other papal basilicas within Rome.  They became known as "the prisoner of the Vatican", a title that was still current in my childhood, in spite of the 1929 accord with the Italian government that established the current status of the Vatican City State.  During this period, in addition, public processions and pilgrimages were prohibited by the new Italian State.1  The effects of these conditions long outlasted the serious animosity between Church and State and the disruptions of the two World Wars.

 

Pope John Paul II in a Corpus Christi procession late in his papacy.

 

It was Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian Pope in centuries, who revived the tradition of a Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Rome a few years into his pontificate.2  The Mass of Corpus Christi is now celebrated outdoors in front of the papal basilica of Saint John Lateran, the oldest Roman church, built by Constantine himself.  At the end of the Mass, the procession moves around the pizza on which the church is located and onto the Via Merulana.  At the other end of Via Merulana is the basilica of Saint Mary Major, where it ends with an outdoor service of Benediction.

 

Pope Benedict XVI in a Corpus Christi procession

In the later years of Pope Saint John Paul II's life, the pope made this journey kneeling (and later simply sitting) in adoration before a monstrance that was bolted onto an altar placed atop the back of a truck.  Pope Benedict XVI also used this method of participation.  Pope Francis, during his first years as Pope followed the truck on foot, without carrying the monstrance.  In his later years he appears to have preferred not to take part in the procession at all, offering the Mass and the Benediction at the beginning and end each time, but going by car on a different route between the two basilicas.  

Pope Francis walking behind the truck bearing the Monstrance in his first Corpus Christi procession in 2013.

 

Therefore, it was with a considerable amount of surprise that I found, when tuning into the Vatican TV presentation, that Pope Leo chose to walk the route, carrying the monstrance all the way!  What a beautiful thing to do!  Glimpses of the Pope holding Jesus in the monstrance, surrounded by clerics, under a golden canopy held by lay persons, evoked memories of medieval manuscript representations of this same event.3  

 

 

John Siferwas, A Corpus Christi Procession
From The Lovell Lectionary
English (Glastonbury), c.1400-1410
London, British Library
MS Harley 7026, fol. 13r

 

 

A Eucharistic Procession
From a Gospel Lectionary
Italian (Padua), 1436
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M 180, fol. 68r

In this image the canopy is carried by angels. Therefore, I hesitate to call it a Corpus Christi procession, which are more earthbound. It is, however, indicative of the solemnity of the earthly Corpus Christi procession, of which it is a model.

 

Jean Colombe, A Corpus Christi Procession
From the Pontifical matutinale and missal of Jean Coeur
French (Bourges), c. 1460-1470
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS G 49, fol.148r

Master of James IV of Scotland, A Procession for Corpus Christi
From the Spinola Hours
Flemish (Bruges), c. 1510-1520
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum
MS Ludwig IX 18, fol. 48v

And that is entirely appropriate because, in a sense, time has no meaning here.  The mystery of the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, that we celebrate on the feast of Corpus Christi, is the same in every age and place.  The images of the honor we offer should be the same, whether their date is 1325 or 2025.

 

 

Pope Leo XIV prepares for Benediction on the steps of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major at the end of the 2025 Corpus Christi procession.

For bringing our attention to this timeless aspect of the feast of Corpus Christi, I say "Bravissimo, Papa Leone!" 

 ©  M. Duffy, 2025

1.  Owen Chadwick,  A History of the Popes 1830-1914. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, online edition: Oxford Academic, 1 Nov. 2003), https://doi.org/10.1093/0198269226.003.0006,  "The Law of Guarantees". accessed June 24 2025, 

2.   Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, Remembering Corpus Christi with Pope John Paul II.  Today's Catholic, May 28, 2013.  (https://todayscatholic.org/remembering-corpus-christi-with-pope-john-paul-ii/), accessed June 24, 2025)

3.  The men holding the canopy poles appear to belong to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.  This is an order of chivalry that, like the Knights of Malta, descends from one of the orders founded at the time of the Crusades.  As their name suggests, the principal work of this order of lay men and women lies in supporting the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.