Pope Leo XIV wore a green and white chasuble created by Filippo Sorcinelli, a 51-year-old Italian designer, during Mass in the port city of Rimini this Saturday, the latest commission from a man Vogue magazine has nicknamed the "couturier of the sacred."
Sorcinelli has led Atelier LAVS, a workshop dedicated to religious vestments, for 25 years. He has now created liturgical garments for the last three popes: Benedict XVI, Francis and Leo XIV.
Sorcinelli told AFP that dressing a pope was, above all, like dressing a priest. He said the respect involved was the same and the parameters were the same: caring about the respect owed to the role a priest or a pope occupies, and therefore about their dignity and how they present themselves to the world.
He said the liturgical rules that must be followed were not restrictions but guidelines, rules, fixed points, and he described sacred art as an absolutely important message of revelation.
Incense and fabric
Nicknamed the couturier of the sacred by Vogue, Sorcinelli has watched his business grow over the years to include perfumes and body products.
But the devout Catholic said he remains driven by his faith, first kindled in the small church of his hometown of Mondolfo, in eastern Italy, where he still remembers the smell of incense and the antique fabrics carefully kept in the sacristy.
He said he could never do this work if he did not believe, if he were not in some way living an experience of faith. Sorcinelli has also served as principal organist of Rimini cathedral and other nearby churches.
He said his path really began in that small church in Mondolfo, in the Marche region, where from childhood he went with his mother to help clean the building.
Sorcinelli, assisted by a team of 11 seamstresses, showed the green silk forming the base of Leo's vestment for Rimini, unrolling the fabric across a long table.
He explained that the deep, solemn green evokes the period of the liturgical year devoted to hope and to safeguarding creation. Gold and silver inlays and green agate stones complete the garment.
He said there was really no better choice to describe the setting: right there on the beach, right there in the port of Rimini, where the ornamentation also evokes the portholes of ships.
Art as expression
As a young man, Sorcinelli met the then Augustinian priest Robert Prevost, the birth name of Pope Leo XIV, but he said the two have not spoken since.
For papal commissions, he presents possible designs and fabric samples to the Vatican office that organizes Masses and other celebrations with the pope, the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.
He explained that creating a pontifical vestment, in this case the chasuble and the mitre worn on the body and the head, can take anywhere from a few weeks to three or four months of work.
What the future holds for the designer, perfumer and organist remains to be seen, he said.
He said he considers art an inexhaustible source of expression, and that stopping would mean having completed one's own existence, a point he does not believe he has reached.
