20/12/2025
In the Catholic tradition, the bishop’s skull cap, known as the zucchetto, carries a meaning that is at once symbolic, spiritual, and historical. Its color immediately identifies ecclesiastical rank, with purple indicating a bishop, red a cardinal, and white the pope, making it a quiet visual language of the Church’s hierarchy.
Beyond identification, the zucchetto expresses authority understood not as personal power but as responsibility received from God through apostolic succession. By covering the head, the seat of judgment and governance, it signifies that a bishop’s leadership is exercised in humility and submission to divine authority.
Within the liturgy, the use of the zucchetto deepens this meaning. The bishop removes it at the most sacred moments, especially during the Eucharistic Prayer, a gesture that shows reverence before the mystery and presence of Christ. Historically, the skull cap also had a practical origin, protecting clerics with tonsured heads from the cold of medieval churches, but what began as necessity gradually took on enduring symbolic value.
Today, the bishop’s skull cap stands as a sign of continuity with centuries of tradition, reminding both bishop and faithful that ecclesial authority is service, reverence comes before status, and the Church’s ministry is always lived under God.
