Leo XIV’s New Pastoral Staff: Bent Cross with Ascending Christ ‘No Longer Bound By the Nails of the Passion’!

When hideous art meets bad theology…

Leo XIV’s Strange New Pastoral Staff: Bent Cross with Ascending Christ ‘No Longer Bound By the Nails of the Passion’!

(image: YouTube screenshot/Vatican News)

For the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2026, Robert Prevost — the false pope from Chicago who is now known as Leo XIV — showed up with a new pastoral staff, also called a crozier or ferula.

In a blog post reporting on the new ‘papal’ staff, Vatican News quotes an explanation given by the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff:

The pastoral staff of Pope Leo XIV “presents Christ no longer bound by the nails of the Passion, but with His glorified body in the act of ascending to the Father. As in the appearances of the Risen Lord, He shows His wounds to His own as luminous signs of victory, which, while not erasing human suffering, transfigure it into the dawn of divine life.”

(“A new pastoral staff for Pope Leo”, Vatican News, Jan. 9, 2026)

Combining the Crucifixion of Our Lord with His Ascension by creating a kind of ‘Ascendifix’ is utterly bizarre. Christ died on the Cross, was taken down from it and placed in the tomb, rose from the grave, and forty days later ascended to the Father. How can anyone show Christ ascending from the Cross?

Let’s look at this new cross in some detail:

(image: detailed cutout from photo by Independent Photo Agency/Alamy Live News)

The resemblance to the hideous ferula of the false Pope Paul VI (r. 1963-1978), known as the ‘bent cross’ or ‘Scorzelli cross’ (named after its creator), is unmistakable. Although supposedly showing a resurrected and ascending Christ, His sacred countenance does not reflect joy or triumph but seems to depict sleep or suffering.

Furthermore, the hair of His sacred Head is shown as flapping in the wind. This reminds one of the atrocious ‘Resurrection’ sculpture the Vatican has been using as the backdrop for the stage of its (appropriately named) Paul VI Audience Hall since 1977. More on that here.

Here are more images of Leo’s Jan. 6 liturgy for the Epiphany showing the new ferula:

(image: Independent Photo Agency/Alamy Live News)

(image: dpa picture alliance via Alamy)

(image: Independent Photo Agency/Alamy Live News)

The theological explanation for the ‘Ascendifix’ is hardly convincing. It sounds more like an excuse for novelty.

But let’s accept the justification given for a moment, for the sake of argument. Would this not imply that the Catholic Church had it wrong for 2000 years, beginning with the Apostles themselves? “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor 1:23); “…with Christ I am nailed to the cross” (Gal 2:19).

Staying with the logic of an ascending Christ on/off the Cross, we might as well go a step further: Why not also include a depiction of Christ sending the Holy Ghost on Pentecost while we’re at it?

In any case, bizarre ferulas and croziers are very much a Novus Ordo thing. Let us never forget the grotesque ‘millipede’ staff ‘Pope’ Francis introduced on Nov. 1, 2013, as well as the bizarre ‘dental explorer’ he first used on Sep. 27, 2014. (That of Cardinal Reinhard Marx also deserves a dishonorable mention.)

Based on the first eight months in his new role, Leo XIV seems to understand the importance of beauty and decorum, yet this new ferula deviates from his otherwise high aesthetic standards. Although not as much of an eyesore as Paul VI’s ‘bent cross’, this new pastoral staff is both displeasing to the eyes and theologically unsound.

We recall the words of Pope Pius XII:

…one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer’s body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.

(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei, n. 62; underlining added.)

Prophetic words indeed.