Following custom, Pope Benedict performed several baptisms today. But he broke with recent custom in at least one significant way, according to this report:

Pope Benedict XVI baptized 13 babies in the Sistine Chapel during a Sunday Mass celebrated at the altar at the foot of Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” wall fresco.

In a departure from tradition, Benedict did not celebrate the Mass at a small altar set up to face the congregation. Instead, he celebrated it with his back to the congregation, which included the children’s parents, godparents, grandparents and siblings.

Decades ago, priests routinely celebrated Mass at altars with their backs to parishioners, but after the modernizing changes of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, it became common practice for the celebrant to face the congregation.

The 80-year-old pontiff said it was a special joy for him to baptize the babies, the children of Vatican employees. He asked to families to raise the children with “faith, hope and charity.”

As he was leaving the chapel at the end of the ceremony, the pope suddenly looked at his hand, glanced toward the floor and turned to an aide, apparently to say that his papal ring had slipped off. An aide found the ring near the altar and handed it back to the pontiff.

Another report from Reuters, puts it this way:

Pope Benedict celebrated parts of Sunday’s Mass with his back turned on the congregation, re-introducing an old ritual that had not been used in decades.

The Pope used the Sistine Chapel’s ancient altar set right against the wall under Michelangelo’s dramatic depiction of the Last Judgment, instead of the altar placed on a mobile platform that allowed his predecessor John Paul II to face the faithful.

A statement by the Vatican’s office for liturgical celebrations said it had been decided to use the old altar, where ballots are placed during papal elections, to respect “the beauty and the harmony of this architectonic jewel.”

That meant that for the first time in this kind of celebration since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the pope occasionally turned his back on the faithful and faced the Cross. He also read his homily from an old wooden throne on the left of the altar used by Pius IX in the 19th century.

Photo: from Associated Press

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