Ash Wednesday in Rome, 1960

Another great discovery from the archives of British Pathé: unedited footage of Pope St John XXIII participating in the procession at the Roman station church for Ash Wednesday, Santa Sabina. Since the early decades of the 13th century, this church has been the home of the Generalate of the Order of Friars Preachers; early on in the video, we see a large crowd of young Dominicans, including a few in the (now abolished) habit of the lay brothers, with black scapular. Several of Friars also have clearly visible clerical tonsures, and at the very beginning, we also see members of a lay confraternity in habit and hood.