Last Monday 29^th June, the traditional date of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the recently appointed Archbishop of Westminster, Richard Moth, together with 34 other Metropolitan Archbishops, received the pallium from Pope Leo XIV during a Papal Mass in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In the Catholic Church, several dioceses are grouped together to form a Province, and the Metropolitan, is the senior bishop among them. Our Diocese of Nottingham is in the Province of Westminster, and so Archbishop Moth is our Metropolitan. Metropolitan Archbishops are always given the pallium.

The pallium is a narrow band of white wool marked with six black crosses (see photo on the left).  It is woven from lamb’s wool blessed by the Pope each year on the feast of St Agnes (from the Latin “Agnus” meaning lamb). It is a very ancient vestment, and is worn over the shoulders of the Archbishop, which reminds him that he is first of all a shepherd. The Fathers of the Church loved to picture the Good Shepherd carrying the lost sheep home. The shepherd knows his sheep, goes before them, searches for them when they go astray, and if necessary, lays down his life for them. Authority in the Church is never separated from sacrifice.

The pallium has been bestowed by the Pope for over fourteen centuries, and it signifies visible communion with the Successor of St Peter. We heard in the Gospel last weekend how Our Lord gave to St Peter the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:13-19). Peter and his successors as Bishop of Rome would be the sign of unity that would endure in the Church until the end of time. The pallium is a symbol of that unity, and it is for this reason it is bestowed by the Pope, and how fitting it is that this should take place annually on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

For us here in England, there is a historical curiosity concerning the pallium. The ancient coat of arms of the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury still bears the image of the pallium. Before the tragic break of the Church in England with Rome in the sixteenth century, the Archbishops of Canterbury would have travelled to Rome or received from Rome that very sign of communion with the Apostolic See. We think immediately of St Augustine (died 605), who landed in Kent in 595, having been sent to this island by Pope St Gregory the Great. We think of St Anselm (ca 1033-1109), defending the rights and liberty of the Church, and St Thomas Beckett (ca 1119-1170), murdered in his cathedral because he would not surrender the rights of God to human powers. All these Archbishops of Canterbury wore the pallium. The pallium has long disappeared from the vesture of any Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, and yet the heraldic pallium has remained. This quietly witnesses to a thousand years when England was Catholic and looked to Rome, not as a foreign power, but as the centre of Catholic unity.

The pallium reminds us that the Church is meant to be one, and that true unity is to be in communion with the Successor of St Peter. Faith in these times seems weaker, and Christianity remains divided, but we must never give up hope. Christ promised that there would be “one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16), and God can still bring about what may seem impossible to us. Let us pray, therefore, that England may one day return to full visible unity in the Catholic Church. This won’t come about by human effort alone, but by God’s grace, quietly at work over time, healing divisions and restoring what has been lost. In the words of St Ambrose of Milan (ca 339-397), “Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia.” “Where Peter is, there is the Church.”

Fr Paul Gillham, IC