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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

The Vatican says leaked documents that seemingly undermined Pope Francis’ stated reason for restricting the old Latin Mass ...

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.

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 ...

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 ...

Retropolis A short history of weird papal conclaves, from open bribery to riots. Election of the Catholic Church’s 266 popes was rarely without controversy.

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.

The papal conclave – a group of about 130 cardinals who will vote in secret to choose the successor of Pope Francis – will begin on May 7, the Vatican announced Monday.. During his 12 years of ...

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 ...