Pope Leo XIV made use of a new pastoral staff on Jan. 6, the Solemnity of the Epiphany and the closing of the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
The Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff explained that the silver staff, which depicts the Resurrected Christ in front of the cross, maintains continuity with the staffs, or papal ferulas, used by Pope Leo’s predecessors, according to a Jan. 9 Vatican News report.
The office stated that the staff proclaims “the mystery of love expressed by Christ on the Cross with its glorious manifestation in the Resurrection.”
The office explained that the staff “presents Christ no longer bound by the nails of the Passion, but with His glorified body in the act of ascending to the Father. As in the appearances of the Risen Lord, He shows His wounds to His own as luminous signs of victory, which, while not erasing human suffering, transfigure it into the dawn of divine life.”
While the pastoral staff was never part of the official papal insignia, popes have used the ferula pontificalis, an insignia indicating their spiritual authority and governance, since the High Middle Ages, Vatican News states.
However, the office states that the ferula was rarely used liturgically, “except on certain occasions, such as the opening of the Holy Door, to knock three times upon its panels, or during the consecration of churches, to trace on the floor the Latin and Greek alphabets prescribed by the rite.”
As CatholicVote reported in May 2025, Pope Leo, at the First Sunday Mass of his pontificate, used the ferula of Pope Paul VI, which was first used at the closing of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Saint John Paul II had used the same ferula at his papal inauguration Mass and frequently throughout his pontificate.
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