Pope Leo XIV’s fashion choices make waves, and many wonder what they mean

Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on May 8, 2025. (Alessandra Tarantino / AP Photo)

VATICAN CITY — When Pope Leo XIV stepped out on the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica to greet the crowd for the first time after his May 8 election, liturgical fashion aficionados around the globe took note: Gone was the simple white cassock and silver cross favoured by Pope Francis. Back was the red satin mozzetta shoulder cape, the burgundy stola with gold embroidery and a gold cross held by a double-stranded silken gold cord.

Over Leo’s first few weeks, the excitement grew among liturgical fashion-conscious Catholics as they noticed new additions to the wardrobe, or rather a return to the old additions of the papal wardrobe: cufflinks, white pants, lace.

After Francis’ revolutionary papacy, Vatican watchers are now wondering if Leo’s return to the past sartorial look means a return to the past on other things too, including more substantial policy issues. But for tailors at the elite handful of liturgical tailoring shops in Rome, there is hope that Leo’s return to the fancier garb of popes past will mean a boon to business if Leo’s traditional look has a trickle-down effect from the pope to priests and all those in between.

The style is a return to form

According to the Rev. John Wauck, professor of church communication at the Pontifical Holy Cross University in Rome, Leo’s clothing choices are a “return to form,” and his attire similar to that worn by Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and other popes going back to the middle ages.

They show “a respect for tradition,” he said.

Such respect for the papal office is important for many conservative Catholics. Many conservatives and traditionalists soured on Francis’ informal style and disdain for tradition, which reached its pinnacle with his his crackdown on the old Latin Mass. The old liturgy was celebrated before the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council; Francis greatly restricted access to the old liturgy, saying it had become a source of division in parishes.

Leo has shown strong familiarity with Latin, and has taken to singing the Sunday noontime prayer in Latin. Some traditionalist Catholics are hoping Leo will take the pro-Latin path even further and reverse Francis to allow greater use of the traditional Latin Mass.

Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology at Villanova University, where Leo went to college, said it’s too early to tell if Leo will reverse Francis’ reform.

“It remains to be seen if Leo’s more traditional attire and liturgical style means that he will change Francis’ strong decisions limiting the so-called ‘Latin Mass,’” he said.

That said, Faggioli said U.S. conservatives seems particularly happy with Leo’s traditional attire, given Francis’ disdain for the fashion pomp of the papacy.

“In this sense, Francis might have been a parenthesis or an interlude, more than a changer of the tradition in ‘papal style,’” he said in an email.

Leo has made other changes, too

At his inaugural Mass on May 18, 2025, Pope Leo XIV reached out his arm to sprinkle holy water and revealed a shirt with cufflinks, which Francis had largely avoided. He was also wearing an amitto, and an alb held in place by a cingulum. For the non-experts, the amitto is a lacy linen cloth that goes around the neck, the alb is the white tunic worn under the ceremonial vestment, and the cingulum is a braided rope with tassels that serves as a belt.

If it weren’t for photographers’ long lenses relentlessly trained on the pope’s every gesture, Leo’s switch from Francis’s standard black pants to more traditional white papal trousers would have gone completely unnoticed.

In addition to the clothing changes, Leo has returned to some other traditions of the Vatican that Francis eschewed.

He has shown himself willing to accept the traditional “baciamano” or kissing of his ring. Francis disliked having his ring kissed and often pulled his hand away if someone tried to kiss it.

“I think that what we see with Pope Leo is a willingness to embrace tradition, even if it risks seeming perhaps more formal than Pope Francis,” Wauck said. The idea is that “seeing that tradition as a treasure to be conserved and embraced as opposed to something that makes one feel perhaps a little bit standoffish.”

It remains to be seen whether Leo will move into the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace, which stood empty during the 12-year Francis papacy. Francis shocked the world by choosing to live in a small room at the Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, eating his meals in the common dining room.

For the Rev. Castro Prudencio, this is all much ado about nothing. “For Pope Francis it was simplicity. Always. And Pope Leo has taken up what Pope Benedict had and many others. That is what the church is like,” he said.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Trisha Thomas, The Associated Press