This Is How Pope John Paul II’s 1993 Easter Mass Vestment Was Made

Yumi Katsura is no stranger to pomp and circumstance. The 86-year-old Japanese designer has created some of the most extravagant couture and bridal looks during her five-decade-long career, including one wedding gown made with rare diamonds and pearls that cost nearly $7 million. Despite Katsura’s ornate body of work (she says that she’s dressed “more than 700,000 brides of all faiths”), there was nothing more spectacular, at least for the designer herself, than the garment she once made for the man they say is closest to God. In the early ’80s, Katsura was visiting Rome twice a year to source materials and fabrics for her eponymous Tokyo-based label. She became fascinated with the Vatican and with all of the vestments worn by the bishops and the pope at that time, John Paul II. Katsura decided to contact the pope’s office and ask about creating a custom garment for him. “They told me that there had been so many offers,” she explains of the initial phone call with the Vatican. “They told me that I could make and send them a garment but also emphasized that there was absolutely no guarantee that he would wear it.” Katsura adds, “Pope John Paul II was an actor in his youth and as such, he had a distinct personal style and was very much involved in the choosing of his own clothing.”

Katsura took her chances and went straight to work. She was told that the garment could not be too heavy because Pope John Paul II was aging and could not carry that kind of extra weight. This was, of course, a challenge for a designer who built her career on elaborate gowns made with lavish embellishments and rich fabrics. “I was at a loss at first because my original intention was to create a vestment made of thick gold textile,” Katsura says. “Instead, I decided to use a gold steric jacquard, which would generate the same kind of light but not weigh the body down.” She chose a material with a pansy pattern, meant to symbolize Poland, where Pope John Paul II was born. It took Katsura a year to finish the vestment. Unfortunately, when it finally came time for her to present her work in the spring of 1981, the meeting had to be postponed after the pope was shot and almost killed in an assassination attempt at St. Peter’s Square. It wasn’t until 1993 that Katsura finally had the chance to visit the Vatican and show the pope the gilded item she’d handcrafted for him.

“Many of the archbishops praised it as ‘the most beautiful vestment ever,’ ” Katsura remembers. Along with his traditional miter, or the tall headpiece used for church services, the pope wore Katsura’s long gold cape with a red banner down the middle to lead Easter mass that year. “This is the only religious vestment I have ever made,” Katsura notes. “I do recall clearly the words the pope said to me after he saw the design, and they were simply, ‘Thank you, I appreciate it.’ ” Though he spoke few words to the designer and though she is not Catholic, Katsura says that the long process of creating the pope’s holy dress was, in her own words, “the joy of my life.”