On 60th birthday, archbishop gets special honor from pope

VATICAN CITY -- As the summer sun set over St. Peter's Basilica yesterday and thousands of Catholics gathered in the embrace of the church's elliptical piazza, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston received the simple woolen band that binds him symbolically to Pope John Paul II and the historic tradition of the world's largest faith.

The aging pontiff, frail but sounding stronger than he has in recent months, imposed the pallium on O'Malley and 43 other archbishops in an elaborate 2-hour outdoor ceremony on the steps leading to the basilica's Renaissance facade.

O'Malley, who also celebrated his 60th birthday yesterday, walked slowly up the steps, knelt on a pillow at the pope's feet, and kissed the pontiff's signet ring as the pope formally granted him the pallium, a circular band of white wool decorated with six crosses that is worn over the shoulders with two weighted pendants that fall down the bishop's chest and back. The pallium, granted chiefly to metropolitan archbishops such as O'Malley, symbolizes the bond of those church leaders with the pope, who also wears the pallium.

''It's an unusual birthday present," O'Malley said in an interview before the ceremony. ''It's a very moving experience, especially when you see it in its historical implications. Pastorally, it certainly is a reminder to me and to my people of the connectedness of the hierarchy with the ministry of Peter, with the ministry of the Holy Father."

Pope John Paul II has made a practice of granting palliums to new archbishops annually on June 29, the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul.

O'Malley said he also sees the pallium ceremony as a reminder of the global nature of Catholicism. The archbishops gathered yesterday came from the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Italy, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Japan, Madagascar, Martinique, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Taiwan, and Zimbabwe, as well as from the United States.

Four American archbishops were granted the pallium yesterday: O'Malley, Cardinal Justin F. Rigali of Philadelphia, and Archbishops Henry J. Mansell of Hartford and Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis.

O'Malley said that wearing the woolen vestment, made from the wool of two lambs specially raised for and blessed by the pope, is also a reminder of the parable of Jesus carrying a lost sheep.

''Just as the good shepherd carried the lamb on his shoulders, so we have to have this pastoral love and solicitude for our people," the Boston archbishop said.

O'Malley, a Franciscan Capuchin friar who took a vow of poverty and has often eschewed costly parties, said that, unlike other archbishops, he discouraged family and friends from coming to Rome to watch him receive his pallium. He said that about 30 to 40 did so anyway -- including his stepmother and sister, an auxiliary bishop, a few priests, and some friends from his former assignments in Fall River and Palm Beach, Fla. -- but that the only joint celebration would be a Mass he plans to say for the group Friday.

''Personally, I'd rather avoid some of the hoopla, but principally, in the diocese the people have been through a lot in the last two years, and so I think the celebratory nature of this needs to be muted a little bit," he said. ''With the crisis and all of the problems we face and the pain of reconfiguration, I didn't think it was the time to be organizing tours."

Although O'Malley is normally seen in Boston wearing the brown hooded habit of his Capuchin order, at yesterday evening's service he wore the far more elaborate vestments required for the occasion, a red chasuble over a white alb and stole.

A highlight of the ceremony was a partial embrace between the pope, too weak to stand, and Patriarch Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians. Bartholomew took part in the ceremony to appeal for unity, 40 years after an embrace between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Atenagoras I in Jerusalem began a warming of long-strained relations between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

Although the pope remained seated throughout the ceremony and was wheeled in and out on a movable throne, he delivered his entire homily and all his remarks in a slurred but audible voice, a contrast to some previous occasions on which he has been so weak that an aide has had to read his remarks. The pope, 84, suffers from Parkinson's disease and other ailments.

''I've seen him often, and he looks better today than he has in a while," said Jason Makos, 27, of East Bridgewater, a seminarian studying in Rome.

Makos, like other Massachusetts residents who attended the Pallium Mass, is enthusiastic about the archbishop. ''Archbishop O'Malley is an amazing man, and we're blessed to have him," Makos said.

Dawn Guarino, 45, of Shrewsbury, called O'Malley ''a wonderful man who has done such a wonderful job."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.