Pope watchers have been put on notice that the Vatican does not take kindly to facile labels like "retro" or "vintage" when discussing the sartorial choices of Pope Benedict XVI.After insistent rumours that the pope's red shoes were from luxury house Prada, the Vatican finally put the matter to rest.
Benedict, 81, is a "simple and sober man (who is) not dressed by Prada but by Christ," the newspaper L'Osservatore Romano wrote last week, noting that the colour symbolises the blood of martyrs.
While his Serengeti sunglasses may have helped the pope make Esquire magazine's list of the world's best-dressed men last year -- he was named "Accessorizer of the Year" -- pope watchers have noted an apparent hankering for the past both in his vestments and in his liturgical choices.
These include lace or richly embroidered surplices, centuries-old mitres and a red wool camauro cap with ermine trim that goes back to the 12th century and had last been worn by John XXIII, who died in 1963.
Benedict has also brought back the ombrellino, a small umbrella used to symbolise the pope's temporal powers.
Many see in the latest changes the hand of Monsignor Guido Marini, a discreet prelate who became the new master of pontifical liturgical celebrations in October.
Marini, who has largely kept the press at arm's length, gave his first interview to an Italian daily, Il Giornale, in May, which reportedly upset the Vatican with its headline: "The Vintage Pope".
This is perhaps why Marini turned to the Osservatore Romano, which carried his explanation that the use of age-old liturgical accessories was aimed at reinforcing a "sense of mystery" and "the sacred".
The pope caused a stir at an open-air mass in southern Italy last month when he offered communion wafers to pilgrims kneeling on a prie-dieu -- a type of bench used by a person at prayer -- rather than standing.
Kneeling for communion was never prohibited, but the practice -- along with many others considered as reflecting a paternalistic interpretation of the priesthood -- was largely abandoned after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.
The generally practised alternative, considered less intimidating, is for the priest to put the sacred wafer into the hand of the worshipper standing before him, who then puts it into his or her own mouth.
Last year Benedict rehabilitated the 16th-century Latin mass in certain circumstances, saying the old and new forms of the mass should "mutually enrich each other".
Marini predicted that the pope would continue to offer communion wafers into the mouths of kneeling pilgrims in future celebrations.
He said the practice "aids the devotion of the faithful, and makes it easier to enter into the sense of mystery."
Rejecting labels of pre- and post-Vatican II, Marini said: "The Church lives according to the law of continuity in virtue of which it recognises development rooted in tradition."
Comparing practices before and after Vatican II, he added, is "mistaken and typical of highly reductive ideological views."
One prelate, on condition of anonymity, told AFP of his misgivings about the changes underway at the Vatican. "The liturgical celebration is first of all a spiritual encounter between believers and Christ. The increasingly insistent focus on ritual could give this encounter a constrained feeling."
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