The office of pope, successor of St. Peter, has always been steeped in symbolism. But as popes came and went, one symbol has kept returning to prominence: the seal of the Holy See during a papal interregnum.

The sede vacante seal has again become the official emblem of the Holy See since Pope Francis, St. Peter’s 265th successor died, leaving his see vacant on Easter Monday, April 21.

The seal is essentially the insignia of the Holy See, stripped of the recently deceased pope’s coat of arms, and featuring over a pair of keys an unfurled, crimson-and-gold little umbrella or umbraculum with a cross-topped orb on its summit.

Today, these little umbrellas normally have ceremonial uses in the Catholic Church. They stand in the sanctuaries of the world’s basilicas, reminders of a pope’s authority over them.

Visitors to the Basilica Minore del Santo Nin?o de Cebu can see an umbraculum in the church’s sanctuary. Altar servers carry it during entrance processions at High Mass and at the head of the fiesta procession each year.

For a long time, assistants used an umbraculum to shield a pope from the elements. 

Eventually, papal households discontinued such use of the umbraculum. 

Heraldrists incorporated the umbrella’s representation into the Church’s interregnal seal for the first time in 1521.

When a pope dies, the umbraculum on the seal of the Holy See calls to mind the office of the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. It also reminds Catholics that the powers Christ gave to the Church endure even in the absence of a pope.

The camerlengo takes charge, with limited powers, over Church affairs following the death of a pope and leading to a conclave to elect a new one.

The camerlengo in the current interregnum, concurrently the regent of Vatican City is Kevin Joseph Cardinal Farell, 77. An Irish-born American, he was Pope Francis’ prefect for the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life. 

(Like the cardinal secretary of state and other heads of dicasteries, Farell ceased to function as prefect upon Francis’ death).

Power of the keys

Per the apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, which stipulates the rules that prevail in the time between papacies, Cardinal Farell answers for Church governance to the entire Sacred College of Cardinals while a pope has yet to be elected. 

But he is also assisted by three cardinals —a cardinal bishop, a cardinal priest, and a cardinal deacon. 

The trio is elected through the drawing of lots among cardinals to three-day terms to help the camerlengo run day to day church operations.

The rest of the sede vacante seal, basically two keys in saltire or forming an X as in the cross of St. Andrew took inspiration from Sacred Scripture.

“The two keys speak of the supremacy of the pontiff that comes from the keys given to Saint Peter as the first pope,” Fr. Brian Brigoli, chairman of the Archdiocese of Cebu’s commission on heritage, told GMA Integrated News.

The priest was referring to St. Matthew’s gospel record in which Jesus selected St. Peter as leader of the apostles and foundation of the Church.

In that account, Jesus had asked the apostles who he was according to the people. They gave him various answer,s but it was Simon the fisherman who said to him: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.  And I tell you that you are Peter (which means Rock), and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

Jesus went on, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

What Christ bestowed on St. Peter and the popes who succeeded him is known in theology as the power of the keys or papal supremacy. 

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the pope on St. Peter’s see “enjoys, by divine institution, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls.”

But where is the actual see or seat of St. Peter that Pope Francis just vacated? 

That question may be answered in two ways. 

The ancient chair, made of oak, and traditionally held to be St. Peter’s very own cathedra is encased within the bronze-gilded throne sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini that is the centerpiece of the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Pope Francis contemplated that chair when it was brought out of its casing during restoration work in October 2024. 

He presented it to the public for veneration at the end of the Synod on Synodality in the same month. 

For Mauro Cardinal Gambetti, the chair is the “cathedra of love,” a symbol of St. Peter and his successors’ willingness to obey the Lord’s command for them to take care of his sheep and of the Church gathered around its shepherd to walk together as followers of Christ.

The Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter every Feb. 22. 

The celebration, according to the Dicastery for Communication, “is a recognition of the spiritual significance of St. Peter and his successors, as well as a privileged manifestation of God’s love who is our good and eternal Shepherd who wants to gather His entire Church and guide it on the path of salvation.”

The cathedral church of a pope as the Bishop of the Diocese of Rome, however, is the Papal Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior and Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist at the Lateran. 

Known as the mother and head of all the churches in the world, the archbasilica, for now a cathedral that is missing a bishop, is the physical heart of the sede vacante. —LDF, GMA Integrated News