Feed My Lambs

Among the several traditional liturgical celebrations restored over the past year by Pope Leo XIV, there’s one obscure rite you’ve probably never heard of. The “Blessing of the Lambs” dates back to at least the sixth century, when St. Gregory the Great began vesting metropolitan archbishops with pallia—white woolen bands embellished with six black crosses, worn around the neck and draped over the chasuble—as a symbol of fidelity and communion with Rome. According to legend, the two lambs whose fleeces provided the wool for those pallia were owed to the pope as annual “rent” for a fief originally granted by St. Constance, daughter of the emperor Constantine.