Vatican City, May 25, 2011 / 17:05 pm
Pope Benedict XVI did not have a papal tiara until today. At the May 25 General Audience he was presented with one by the Catholics of his native Germany.
The man behind the project, Dieter Philippi, met with CNA before the handover ceremony.
“Well, we thought how every Pope in the past had a tiara. Even John Paul II had one. That was a present from Hungarian Catholics given to him in 1981. So we thought about making a tiara from German Catholics to hand over to the present Pope.”
Dieter is from Kirkel in the Saarland region of western Germany. By day he’s a chief executive of a telecommunications company. In his spare time, though, he’s an avid collector of religious headgear. In fact, he now has over 500 hats from numerous world religions.