Rorate Caeli

Continuity is in the eye of the beholder

The modern baptismal font used since 1996 for the Sistine Chapel Epiphanytide papal baptisms...

...was replaced, by order of the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini, with this:
January 8, 2012

Here is what this peculiar work of sacred art looks like when closed. A description? A metal globe on a metal olive tree lookalike on a rock shipped from the river Jordan. It was designed by Father Salvatore Vitiello, professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and at the Lateran University, and head of the M.A. program in "Architecture, Sacred Art, and Liturgy" of the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. 

A fitting symbol for the Reform of the Novus Ordo?
A new translation of a modern Baptismal Font?
Improvement? Continuity? Rupture?
We report: you decide

(Source of 1st and 3rd images: A. Tornielli)