Pope Leo XIV presided over his inaugural Mass on Sunday. Years ago, it would have included a solemn moment when the pontiff was crowned with an elaborate gold and jewel-encrusted papal tiara.

The tiara’s glittering past. While Pope Leo XIV, like his recent predecessors, is unlikely to don the papal tiara — a triple-crowned headpiece entrenched in medieval grandeur — it remains ...

With his motu proprio, the Holy Father was only terminologically accommodating what had already been established by facts.The last papal coronation took place in the splendid and luxurious ...

One of the most extravagant examples belonged to Pope Paul II in the 1460s; he wore a tiara encrusted with gems worth over 200,000 florins — more than US$22 million in today’s dollars. Another ...

Excitement, shock in Rome as first American pope, Leo XIV, elected 16:17. Pope Leo XVI will be formally installed as pontiff when he holds his inaugural public Mass at St. Peter's Square on May 18 ...

Up until 1963, it was the “coronation” of the new pope, who wore the papal tiara. The rite took five hours (!) in 1958 for St. John XXIII, but was simplified somewhat for St. Paul VI in 1963.

North-of-Europe cartoonists have been making sport of the Italo-Papal Treaty & Concordat ever since it was signed (TIME, Feb. 18). The idea that Dictator Mussolini purposes to use the Catholic ...

The Sistine Chapel is ready for the papal conclave. Front-runners such as Parolin and Tagle are losing momentum amid a divided College of Cardinals.

VATICAN CITY — On Wednesday afternoon, red-hatted clerics who carry the same weight and dignity as princes within the Catholic Church entered the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave to choose ...

A papal conclave, the election of a new pope, tends to begin 15-20 days after a papal vacancy. Black or white smoke indicates each day's decision.

You can’t read about papal conclaves without learning of the longest one, the 33-month conclave of 1268-1271. After Pope Clement IV died in November 1268, cardinals met in Viterbo, Italy , about ...