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Arms of Bishops
The bulk of those in episcopal orders fall into the simple bishop category, and it is no surprise that over the history of the arms in the Church this category has seen more errors and exceptions than any other. All bishops are entitled to ornament their coat of arms with a green galero with 12 fiocchi being arranged six on each side, and a single transverse processional cross behind the shield. This applies to residential bishops, titular bishops, and auxiliary bishops. Residential bishops may, of course, marshall their see's arms with their personal arms.
As mentioned above, there are some exceptions to this rule. The three major exceptions are explained below; however, since these exceptions have largely fallen into disuse, simple descriptions with no sample images have been provided.
Bishops who occupy exempt sees -- These are sees that are not subject to a metropolitant, but are instead immediately subject to the Holy See. Found mostly in Europe, particularly in Italy and Switzerland, and very small countries, these bishops use the same green galero with 20 tassels as an archbishop uses, but do not use the double transverse processional cross. Behind their shield, they use the single transverse cross like any other suffragan bishop.
Bishops who occupy sees with archepiscopal privileges -- Bishops who occupy these sees are granted this purely honorary privilege as long as they occupy that see. They remain a suffragan bishops to their local metropolitan as any other bishop would be. These bishops use the green galero with 12 tassels but use a double transverse cross instead of the normal single transverse cross. Only four sees in the world have been granted this priviledge -- Arezzo, Warmia, Guadalajara, and Pecs. Warmia became a metropolitan see in 1992 and Guadalajara in 1863 leaving only two sees with this priviledge. However, neither of these two have used this privilege in quite some time; and so, for all practical purposes, this exception can be considered dead.
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Bishop of Jefferson City |
Bishop of Metuchen Courtesy of designer & artist Fr. G. Selvester |