New Pope’s Cassock is Available in Three Sizes

by CNS · Published May 6, 2025 · Updated May 5, 2025

Raniero Mancinelli, a tailor and owner of a clerical clothing store near the Vatican, sews trim on one of the white cassocks he is preparing for the next pope. While not commissioned to make the vestments, he is offering the Vatican a small, a medium and a large cassock that whoever is elected pope might wear. (CNS photo/Cindy Wooden)

By Cindy Wooden, CNS – The rules and rituals for the election of a new pope say that immediately after his election, he goes into the sacristy of the Sistine Chapel and puts on “the garments that are appropriate to him.”

That’s all that is written.

For more than 100 years, that meant that the Gammarelli family’s clerical tailor shop near the Pantheon in Rome had already sent to the Vatican three white wool cassocks – large, medium and small – with an attached capelet.

But Lorenzo Gammarelli, who now runs the shop with three cousins, told Agence France-Presse on April 24 that they will not be sending the customary three cassocks to the Vatican ahead of the conclave scheduled to begin May 7.

“We were told by the Vatican that they have taken care of it,” he told AFP, explaining that he believes the vestments for the new pope would “be those of the previous conclaves, because each time we made three robes, and they used only one.”

Not receiving an order has not stopped Raniero Mancinelli, though.

From his tailor and religious goods shop in the Borgo Pio, near the Vatican, he told Catholic News Service May 2 that he has sewn vestments for Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI and St John Paul II, and he was preparing the set of three – small, medium and large – just in case.

He is sizing for the next pope’s girth, not height, he said, because when the new pope appears on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica no one will notice how long the cassock is. “Later, the right size will be made.”

Mancinelli said he would deliver the lightweight wool cassocks, with appropriately calibrated sashes and white zucchettos, or skullcaps, to the Vatican liturgy office before the conclave begins.

He’s been a tailor for some 70 years, since he was 15 years old.