ITALY:The pope's sartorial taste echoes styles of the 15th and 16th centuries, writes MICHELLE BOORSTEIN in Rome
WHILE THE pundits are analysing Pope Benedict XVI's views of US foreign policy and the woes of the US Catholic Church, there are some out there with a simple plea: can someone please tell me when popes started wearing lace, and ermine collars?
A long time ago, that's when. And that's the point.
For those paying attention to Vatican couture, Pope Benedict has been causing a buzz since he came into office by reviving the more ornate clergy styles that go back in some cases to the 15th and 16th centuries. Taller mitres. Red velvet capes (or mozzettas). Heavily embroidered smocks (or chasubles).
For those concerned about the direction of the church, it is stuff to obsess over. Does it mean the pope wants to take the church back into the past, and if so, in what ways? Or does it simply mean this cultured, piano-playing German theologian has an appreciation for the drama and theatre of religion?
Traditional Catholics have been delighted since the pontiff started reviving ancient aspects of church life, including making it easier for priests to say the Latin Mass and encouraging the wider use of Gregorian chant and Renaissance music for worship. They see his clothing choices as a powerful symbolic message: the church ain't changing - not on dress, and certainly not on abortion or gay marriage or priestly celibacy.
Noting that the pope is choosing styles from the decades, even centuries, before Vatican II, some reformers express concern about what the pontiff's clothing choices might indicate.
They "worry that this old-fashioned 'character' also comes with an old-style authoritarianism," David Gibson, a biographer of Pope Benedict and well-known Catholic blogger, wrote in a recent essay published by the Religion News Service.
Why the pope is wearing fur and lace is a subject of some sensitivity.
In 25 years as head of the Vatican's orthodoxy-enforcing office, the pope developed a reputation for rigidity. But one day last week in his office overlooking St Peter's piazza, the pope's top liturgical official played down the gossip, saying he isn't trying to return the church to the Dark Ages.
Mgnr Guido Marini, formally known as Maestro delle Celebrazioni Liturgiche Pontificie, or the papal master of ceremonies, said that the pope simply wants Catholics to see the full range of their worship tradition.
"These aren't new things," sniffed Marini, a tall, elegant man who wears a black cassock with buttons from neck to the floor.
At Ghezzi, one of several shops on Via de'Cestari in Rome that sells elaborate clerical garb, manager Maria Ardovini said bishops and priests pay close attention to this stuff.
"When he's wearing some specific vestments, a bishop might say, oh, 'I saw him wearing that the other day, can you make it?' He's a trendsetter, you could say that," said Ardovini, a short, jocular woman who has been working on clergy fashion for 40 years. "Benedict is very much a traditionalist."
Ardovini was all chatty until she was asked about the pope's red shoes, and rumours that they are Prada. "Please don't say that," she said, her smile fading. "It's blasphemous."
Pope John Paul II's clothing choices were simpler. "He would just wear whatever was given to him," Ardovini said.
"John Paul was largely not proactive in liturgical choices. He was focused more on the bigger picture than Benedict," said Fr Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit professor of liturgy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. "Benedict has a much keener interest in liturgy."
The buzz this has created can't be underestimated. Prof Pecklers notes that he was once approached by an Orthodox bishop who said, "you have no idea what it has meant to us" that the pope is wearing an ancient form of pallium, or woollen cloak. The bishop told Prof Pecklers that the clothing change means the pope wishes to unify the eastern and western churches.
Many of the vestments the pontiff has been wearing are in the Roman style, experts say, as opposed to the Gothic style that became more popular after the Second Vatican Council. However, Pecklers has written, sometimes the pontiff picks items that combine Gothic and Roman, like the chasuble he wore on Ash Wednesday - longer in the front than the so-called "fiddle-back" chasuble of the Roman period (named for its violin-like appearance).
Whatever Benedict wears during his US trip, it will be certainly dissected by bloggers like Rocco Palmo, who writes Whispers in the Loggia, a must-read for Catholics who want to know every piece of gossip about the church.
Palmo notes that Benedict's vestments on this tour would be watched by Catholics intrigued by ceremonial beauty. By those who want to "understand what is hidden". In other words, he said, "10,000 liturgy geeks." - (LA Times-Washington Post)