Papal cross Papal cross The papal cross is a Christian cross, which serves as an emblem for the office of the Pope in ecclesiastical heraldry. It is depicted as a staff with three horizontal bars near the top, in diminishing order of length as the top is approached. The cross is thus analogous to the two-barred archiepiscopal cross used in heraldry to indicate an archbishop, and seems to have been used precisely to indicate an ecclesiastical rank still higher than that of archbishop. In the past, this design of the cross was often used in ecclesiastical heraldry as a distinctive mark of
Papal household nobility formed a part of the Papal Court. On March 28, 1968, Pope Paul VI reorganized the Papal Court with an apostolic letter "motu proprio", renaming it the "Papal Household" (). In changing the name from what it had been for some centuries, Paul VI said he was returning an "original and noble" name. Moreover, many positions were consolidated into new ones or altogether abolished. According to the "motu proprio": "Many of the offices entrusted to members of the Papal Household were deprived of their function, continuing to exist as purely honorary positions, without much correspondence to concrete needs of