VATICAN CITY (OSV News) — Adding some sweetness to the usual general audience-focused Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV was presented with two lambs Jan. 21 as part of an ancient Roman Catholic tradition marking the feast of St. Agnes of Rome.
The presentation took place in the Vatican’s Urban VIII Chapel on the feast day of the young fourth-century martyr. The lambs were later blessed at the Basilica of St. Agnes Outside the Walls in northern Rome, where St. Agnes is buried.
Under longstanding custom, the lambs’ wool will be used to make the palliums — white woolen bands worn by the pope and metropolitan archbishops as a symbol of pastoral authority and communion with Rome. Each pallium is decorated with six black silk crosses.
The pope formally blesses and imposes the palliums on newly appointed metropolitan archbishops each year on June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Sixth century tradition
The tradition of blessing lambs on St. Agnes’ feast dates to at least the sixth century. It is linked to a legend that says Agnes appeared to her parents after her martyrdom holding a lamb, a symbol of purity.
Reliable information about the saint is difficult to come by. It is known that she was a martyr, one of the most famous Romans to die for the faith.
The story goes that she died bravely around the year 305, perhaps from a sword through the throat — a common execution method of the day. She was little more than a child when she died, perhaps 12 or 13. Her tomb is along the Via Nomentana in Rome, where the lambs were blessed following the papal presentation Jan. 21.
St. Agnes – Virgin and martyr
Historical records also show that lambs were once offered as an annual payment by monks of the Basilica of St. Agnes to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Vatican News reported. Members of the Lateran clergy would then present the animals to the pope for a blessing.
For centuries, the lambs came from the Trappist Abbey of the Three Fountains in southern Rome and were brought to the pope before being sent to the Benedictine nuns of St. Cecilia in Trastevere, Vatican News said. The nuns traditionally sheared the lambs during Holy Week and wove the wool into pallia.
Some elements of the practice have changed in recent years. The Trappist abbey no longer maintains a sheep farm, and the pope no longer blesses the lambs at the Vatican. The Benedictine nuns, however, continue to shear the lambs and prepare the wool for the palliums.
