Readers sometimes ask for more information on cathedral canons. Photos are hard to come by for canons of the Patriarchal Basilicas of Rome. Here is an image of the Rt. Rev. Mons. Salvatore Natuccci (1871-1971), a canon of the Vatican Basilica and the last Treasurer of the Apostolic Camera. He wears the cappa parva of the canons of the Vatican Basilica.
The cappa parva was essentially the cappa magna without the train. Made of crimson silk for the summer, it had a hood in the back that was looped up and tied in the rear below the neck with ribbons to signify the beneficiary had no jurisdiction. The hood was only untied and worn over the head for penitential processions.
This style of the cappa is still seen with canons of Westminster Cathedral in London. In Rome it was strangely replaced with the mantelletta, apparently changed to the color gray in the late 1960s, then changed back to paonazza (magenta) by order of the Pope after the horror of him seeing the canons of St. Mary Major in their new duds.
Incidentally, this illustrious canon also held for thirty-three years (from 1927-1960) the title "Promoter General of the Faith" (Promotore Generale della Fede) for the Sacred Congregation of Rites. With this role he was also known informally as the "Devil's Advocate;" like others in this position before him, because his job required him to find faults in those whose causes were proposed for sainthood. He was involved with over one-hundred persons attaining sainthood, including Pope St. Pius X (the first pope canonized since Pius V in 1712).
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Since 1960 he was a Canon of the Vatican Basilica and held his role of Treasurer in the Apostolic Chamber and Pontifical Household. Notice his cappa parva is red in color. Such rich and splendid pageantry in the Vatican, the development of centuries of traditions.
The doing away with these traditions sadly coincided with a decline in the Church, aggravated by the spirit of the age that piggybacked in with the Vatican Council. I hope the Canons will return to their cappa, a living testimony and a direct link with the past and a tradition of the Church.
In 1971 the good Monsignor passed, four years after the Papal Court and his illustrious position had been done away with. At the time of his passing, he had just turned 100-years old. Nine days before his death, he turned 100 and on that occasion Mons. Giovanni Benelli, the Vatican Foreign Minister, visited him and presented him with a chalice from the Pope.
The Monsignor celebrated Mass every day until a few days before his death, in the end with a dispensation to sit in a chair while celebrating.
What a beautiful vocation, to sing daily the Office and Mass in the Vatican Basilica, with the ethereal hymns of the Roman Church cascading amid the arched ceilings and dome of St. Peter's.
God bless those great ones old, men of eminent learning and spiritual knowledge, who have gone before us. Let us be inspired by them and may he pray for us.
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