There Are Gestures That Cannot Be Improvised. In these first months of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV has performed several gestures—both simple and solemn—that are restoring to the papacy an ancient language that feels, at the same time, surprisingly new. The return of the mozzetta with the hood, of the stole, of solemn vestments: these are not elements of a Pope’s personal wardrobe, but part of the visual grammar of the Church.
Many have noticed, with a certain astonishment, how different this feels from the previous pontificate. After years in which the symbolic language of the papacy was almost completely set aside—replaced by a kind of poverty reduced to outward gesture and therefore misunderstood in its essence—Leo XIV seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
His is not a nostalgic return to the past, but rather an act of fidelity to form—that form which, in the liturgy, is never mere decoration but a living part of the mystery the Church celebrates.
Predictably, sterile comments have not been lacking—such as those of Alberto Melloni, ever ready to criticize others, even the Pope himself, while remaining less eager to explain his own actions. It is curious, in fact, that he has yet to clarify the conflict of interest that saw him, on one hand, coordinating a doctorate financed with public funds, and on the other, serving as secretary of the Bologna school where those very internships were hosted. Nor has he explained the use—and manipulation—of the Pope’s name by his publishing house to promote books by Antonio Spadaro with misleading labels.
Melloni mocked the Pope’s images while signing the Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi te, writing with disdain: “Apple Watch, mozzetta and stole.” As if such a combination were somehow incongruous.
Yet those who look with unclouded eyes understand that what Melloni derides is precisely what reveals Leo XIV’s strength: his ability to hold together tradition and modernity, ancient symbols and contemporary tools, without feeling their contradiction.
The truly anachronistic ones are those who judge another’s freedom from inside their ideological enclosure. They fail to see that the Pope, wearing the mozzetta while carrying a digital watch, manifests a spiritual and intellectual freedomthey do not possess—the freedom of one who does not need to strip away signs in order to appear humble.
Far more incoherent, rather, was the image of those who preached simplicity while wearing sloppy yet expensive vestments, surrounded by the latest technology. Let it be clear: sloppy, not poor. For those vestments, specially ordered, were costly and charged to the Papal Sacristy.
But sloppiness is never a sign of Gospel poverty—it is a sign of spiritual mediocrity. True poverty—the kind that speaks of the Gospel—is always careful, dignified, and transparent. Leo XIV has understood this well: the liturgical sign is not meant to divide but to educate. And therein lies the Church’s truth.
Romano Guardini, in his classic The Spirit of the Liturgy, defined worship as “dogma prayed.” He explained that Christian truth, to be alive, must take on body, space, gesture, color. “The whole divine reality must be translated into expressive appearance,” he wrote, because Christianity is not an idea but an incarnate event.
Every vestment, every architectural line, every ritual movement—Guardini continues—must respond to an inner necessity, becoming “eloquent.”
This is why the language of signs is never marginal. When the Pope wears the red mozzetta, he is not performing an aesthetic act: he is making theology visible.
That small mantle around the shoulders symbolizes presidency in communion and belonging to the Body of the Church. It is a sign of unity, not of power. It reminds us that the one who speaks is not a man with personal opinions, but the Bishop of Rome who presides in charity.
Likewise, the stole that falls over the shoulders is not an ornament. From the earliest centuries it has been the sign of the yoke of Christ, a symbol of obedience and service. Christian authority is carried on the shoulders; it is not displayed. Its vertical line reminds the minister that his word does not belong to him. In an age when every public figure seeks to build a personal “brand,” the stole proclaims the opposite: “Not I, but the Church.”
As for the solemn vestments—already preserved in the sacristies, living witnesses to a millennium of faith, and not newly purchased as during Francis’ pontificate—they are not a return to luxury, but an expression of a pedagogy of faith that speaks through beauty: a beauty that educates, elevates, and manifests the dignity of the Mystery the Church celebrates. As Guardini wrote, liturgy is “the supreme form of Christian art,” uniting measure and glory, visible and invisible. Solemnity, therefore, is not theater, but formation of the gaze—it teaches that the mystery of God deserves the finest of creation. In this sense, Leo XIV is not “reintroducing obsolete symbols.” He is reminding us that in the liturgy, form is part of content. When a Pope humbly accepts to wear the mozzetta or stole, he is not going backward; he is recognizing that truth needs a body. The sign does not replace substance—it serves it. And it is precisely his obedience to tradition that gives Leo XIV the freedom that distinguishes him.
The Pope does not act out of reaction—as if to correct his predecessor—but out of serenity, born of not needing to choose “sides.” He is guided neither by restorationists nor by progressive ideologues. He wears what is offered to him, naturally, almost to say that form belongs to the Church, not to the man who wears it. It is a way of living the Petrine ministry in a sacramental, not personalistic, key. Guardini insists: in the liturgy, “one does not say ‘I’ but ‘we’.” The subject of worship is the entire Church, not the individual. The vestment, in this perspective, is not a mask but an antidote to vanity, freeing the person from protagonism and inserting him into a received, shared language. There is, in this choice, a broader cultural message. After a long time in which every sign of ecclesial formality was read as distance or power, Leo XIV is showing that form does not exclude closeness—it can make it truer. This is the Christian paradox: the more one is shaped by what is not one’s own, the more authentic one becomes. Simplicity without form becomes neglect; form without simplicity becomes ostentation.
Leo XIV seeks a deeper balance—that “sober intoxication of the Spirit,” as Guardini called it. This is not an aesthetic detail, but a principle of governance. A Pope free to embrace what Tradition offers shows himself a man unbound by ideology or popularity. It is a silent yet eloquent way to say that the Petrine ministry is not a media profile but a theological reality expressed through concrete symbols. Those who observe these first months perceive this freedom as breath. After years of performative communication and gestures crafted to “speak” to the world, seeing a Pope who lets the signs speak for themselves feels like a form of evangelical disarmament. There is no will to impress—only the desire to be interpreted through what the Church has always been. Many faithful, especially the young, grasp this message without theological explanations. For signs speak by themselves: they return to the Church her native language, which unites truth and beauty, poverty and solemnity, freedom and obedience. In an age that replaces reasoning with imagery, the liturgy may well remain the last place where the image educates rather than seduces. When Leo XIV appeared at the Quirinale wearing the mozzetta and hood, the gesture carried a weight beyond fabric. It reminded the world that the Pope does not enter as a private citizen, but as the Successor of Peter, the visible representative of a universal communion. It is a sign that restores dignity to the role and truth to the mission, showing that the Church can dialogue with civil institutions not by abandoning her form, but precisely through it.
What strikes the observer is not the richness of the vestments but the poverty of intention with which they are worn. No self-indulgence, no theatrics—only the awareness that every true gesture becomes prayer. That is what makes these signs not objects of debate, but a living language of faith. As Guardini again writes, the liturgy is not a sum of actions but “a life flowing from God to man and back to God.” In that flow, vesture, gesture, music, and word unite as members of one body. To recover the signs of the papacy is to breathe again with the Church—not a return to the past, but an act of fidelity to the essential, to the Mystery that takes visible, daily form to continue speaking to the world.
In a time obsessed with simplification and distortion, Leo XIV is performing a profoundly countercultural act: restoring symbolic depth to the service of Peter. And without fanfare, he is reminding all that true reform does not mean erasing what we have been, but inhabiting with freedom what the Church entrusts to us. For when Tradition is alive, it does not imprison - it frees and unites.
d.R.T. e F.P.
Silere non possum