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 mint lost since 1870, been restored in the form of the Vatican City State, but also much new research has been done on the subject of Papal coins, and with it many new discoveries. Moreover, the whole legal and operational basis for the issue of papal coinage has been twice substantially modified, once by the Lateran Pacts and once with the introduction of the euro. While the Catholic Encyclopedia article states, "There can be no papal coins of earlier date than that of the temporal power of the popes", in fact coinage may well have predated the emancipation of the Papal