The Catholic Church’s Copes of Many Colors

National Catholic Register, 1 February 2025

Liturgical vestments like copes, chasubles and dalmatics are part of the beauty of the liturgy, alongside church architecture, painting and sculpture.

The Feast of the Presentation is celebrated on Feb. 2, 40 days after Christmas, even when it falls on a Sunday, as it does this year. And the feast has an unusual sartorial twist — at the beginning of Mass, you may see the priest wearing a cope.  

The cope is a cape-like vestment that priests and deacons can wear. It is not what the priest usually wears for Mass — that is the chasuble, the outer vestment which is open at the sides but closed at the front and back. The cope surrounds the priest and is longer, but is open at the front.  

It can be worn for processions and liturgical occasions other than celebrating Mass — baptisms, weddings without a nuptial Mass, burials, Eucharistic adoration and processions. As the Feast of the Presentation may begin with a procession, a cope can be worn for the initial rites.   

The cope can be worn over a cassock and surplice. During the period when cassocks fell out of common usage, the cope too was rarely seen. Over the last generation, both cassocks and copes have been more frequently worn. 

Pope Francis — Man of the Cope 

The cope has taken on greater Roman prominence in recent years, due to the decision of Pope Francis to no longer celebrate Mass in public. Instead, he “presides,” leading the Liturgy of the Word and preaching, but does not celebrate or concelebrate Mass at the altar.  

That choice has never been adequately explained by the Vatican. It cannot be due to limited mobility alone, as a special wheelchair was built for Pope John Paul II that enabled him to remain seated while being elevated to the altar. Pope Francis uses a wheelchair at all his public appearances, so there is no apparent reason that he could not use John Paul’s wheelchair to celebrate Mass.  

Whatever the reason, Francis no longer celebrating Mass has meant the return of the cope to common usage. The Holy Father wears one every time he “presides at” but does not celebrate Mass.  

An Elegant Jubilee Cope 

For the most part, the Vatican masters of ceremonies have chosen copes for the Holy Father that are exceedingly plain, often devoid of any Christian symbols. It is partly the papal preference for simplicity, though simplicity does not require aesthetic banality.  

Happily, the Vatican sacristy rose to the occasion recently. For the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s on Christmas Eve, Pope Francis arrived wearing a new cope, elegant and most suitable. The panels included traditional images of Sts. Peter and Paul in the upper portion, and anchors on the lower panels, the symbol of hope, the theme of Jubilee 2025.  

It was a promising upgrade in papal vestiture. Alas, last Sunday the Holy Father returned to a plain green cope, super-ordinary for Ordinary Time. Perhaps future Jubilee Year occasions will revive the beauty of the Christmas Eve cope.  

Plain is not the worst option. Garish can be worse. That was the case at the reopening of Notre Dame of Paris in December. The rite began with the archbishop knocking at the great door, dressed in a cope featuring large colored blocks. The shapes and shades were contrary to the principles of Catholic vestiture, and out of sorts with the specific artistic vision of Notre Dame. 

The archbishop’s cope of brightly colored segments looked liked a vaguely masculine equivalent of the enormous, billowing tricolour dress that Jessye Norman wore to sing La Marseillaise at Bastille Day for the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989. It worked, more or less, for the patriotic dress of a diva. Not so much for the solemn reopening of a cathedral much older than the revolution.  

At the Great Jubilee 2000, John Paul arrived to open the Holy Door at St. Peter’s in a shimmering cope in an abstract pattern of gold, red and blue. It resembled a kaleidoscope and raised eyebrows all around. Part of a 4,000-piece set with matching chasubles and miters for cardinals and bishops, it also included a matching chasuble for John Paul at the altar. Notably, the Holy Father did not change into it. 

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