Nicole Caruso, professional makeup artist and beauty consultant, invites women to explore their feminine genius with her book Worthy of Wearing, released Tuesday.
“Worthy of Wearing started as a movement on social media where my friends and I could share the one way we felt reminded of our God-given beauty without waiting for an occasion,” said Caruso, previously the beauty editor of Verily Magazine.
“No matter our state in life, many women struggle with the fine line between intentional personal style that radiates the joy of an authentic Christian, and attention-seeking fashion that is devoid of dignity and erases the uniqueness of our feminine genius as daughters of Christ,” she said.
Caruso, who is also a mother of three, wanted to write a book that ties together the innate dignity of women and fashion. The book includes the writings of Saint John Paul II and quotes from the saints to provide the backdrop of her ideas about fashion and beauty.
“The vision of this book came from my experience working in beauty, fashion, and media, where women of faith were often left out of the conversation about personal style,” she said. “With more than two billion Christians in the world, it is a surprise that this is one of the few books that layers self-worth, identity in Christ, modern style, and beautiful design and photography into one volume.”
Caruso shares expert shopping tips and encouragement, while discussing personal style, body type, and color palettes in the 216-page coffee table book. She also weaves in visual and written stories of real women and the struggles they face with body image and fashion in today’s world.
“Because so many women, like myself, carry wounds surrounding self-worth, whether it be from feeling unworthy of love, unworthy of pursuing a life of faith, or unworthy of wearing clothes that boost confidence and represent our inherent dignity as women, the message within its pages is universal,” she said. “My hope is that this book and movement helps women of all walks of life know they are seen and loved by Christ.”
Sprinkled throughout the pages are sections for self reflection and contemplation with the Church’s teaching and individual aspirations. Dressing well, Caruso said, is one way to share the Gospel.
“With just a few practical tips and time to reflect on who Christ made them to be, they can begin to uncover their personal style and go forth in their mission with more confidence and presence to those they serve each day.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
A Vatican flag, with the incorrect design likely drawn from Wikipedia, and the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. / Bohumil Petrik/ACI
St. Louis, Mo., Apr 8, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
The flag of Vatican City, with its distinctive yellow and white, is instantly recognizable to many Catholics. Likely far fewer people, though, have scrutinized the papal coat of arms on the right-hand side, instead taking the intricate design — which includes famous crossed keys — for granted.
As it turns out, there’s a good chance that the coats of arms on many of the Vatican flags you’ve seen out in the world are rendered incorrectly. And it took until 2023 for the internet to start taking notice.
Imagine you wanted to print your own version of the Vatican flag. Where would you go to find a high-quality picture of one? If you’re like most internet users, your first stop would probably not be the Vatican’s official (but admittedly outdated) vatican.va website. You’re probably going to pull up Wikipedia, one of the world’s most visited websites and an endless storehouse of free image content. Flagmakers the world over appear to have done so over the years.
Imagine many people’s surprise, then, to discover that the image of the “Flag of Vatican City” displayed on Wikipedia has been wrong several times over the years, most recently from 2017 to 2022. (It was also wrong from 2006–2007.)
What is “wrong” about these flags, you might ask? It’s a small detail in the grand scheme of things but easy to spot once you know about it. The erroneous Wikipedia file includes a red disk at the bottom of the papal tiara as well as a different shade of yellow on portions of the coat of arms.
The anonymous Wikipedia editor who changed the look of the flag in 2017 wrote that he or she did so for “color correction” purposes, noting that the Vatican’s coat of arms includes the red at the bottom of the tiara. The only problem? The Vatican’s official flag design renders the coat of arms differently, with the circular bottom of the tiara in white.
The image was reverted to the correct one in 2022, but the damage was done. A casual internet search will turn up dozens of Vatican flags for sale that clearly used the incorrect image downloaded from Wikipedia. The incorrect flag has even made its way into emojis. (This whole situation gained attention last month after a Reddit user made a post about it.)
An inexpensive Vatican flag available for sale on Amazon that makes use of the incorrect Wikipedia flag design. Amazon/Screenshot
Father William Becker, pastor at St. Columbanus Parish in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, read the Reddit post with interest and amusement. Becker, a self-described “flag guy,” has studied the Vatican flag for years and even wrote an entire book about it. He has fond memories of raising the yellow and white colors over his alma mater, the North American College in Rome.
Becker told CNA that the saga of the Vatican flag on Wikipedia demonstrates a need for the Vatican to step in and clarify exactly what its flag should look like, especially considering the fact that Catholic churches all over the world display the Vatican flag.
It was precisely this lack of clarity on the official design of the Vatican flag that led Becker to create a website detailing, as best as he could, the correct design for the flag.
“Cultural communities in general have turned to flags in a stunning way,” Becker commented, citing in part a proliferation of cheaply made, mass-produced flags. And, anecdotally, there seems to be an ever-increasing interest in the Vatican flag as a way for Catholics to claim an identity, whether by flying a flag at home, waving it at a papal event, or by putting one in their social media profile picture.
The Vatican flag. Bohumil Petrik/CNA
Perhaps surprisingly, the Vatican flag is less than 100 years old, as is Vatican City itself. For more than a millennium before 1870, the pope ruled over the Papal States, large regions mainly within present-day Italy. After the Vatican lost control of the Papal States, it found itself a tiny island surrounded by an acrimonious Italy. It took nearly 60 years until the ratification of the Lateran Accords of 1929 ushered in harmony between the Vatican and Italy, and the creation of the world’s smallest sovereign country.
In the days of the Papal States, many different flags were used, but the yellow and white color scheme was a common feature. Becker said the modern design was first used by the merchant fleet in the Papal States from 1825 to 1870. In 1929, that design was chosen as the new flag of Vatican City, the sovereign country.
“It took a while in 1929 to get some flags made. The techniques of mass production weren’t available yet, and so it would have been a matter of sewing up some flags and fitting out buildings with flag staffs,” Becker noted, saying that during this time and for years afterward there was quite a bit of variation between the Vatican flags people flew, perhaps even more so than today.
“That’s kind of common with other countries too, especially those that don’t really take pains to standardize their design. [Nowadays] a flagmaker is likely to go to a source like Wikipedia, and it may vary in its accuracy,” Becker told CNA.
The same flag chosen in 1929 was reconfirmed in a revised Vatican constitution, issued by Pope John Paul II in 2000. The original Vatican flag was actually square, as indeed the official version is today. Since roughly the 1960s, though, buildings began to fly oblong state flags that followed Italy’s flag proportions, probably because most Vatican flags at the time were mass-produced there.
The flag has special significance beyond the walls of Vatican City as a marker for the Vatican’s extraterritorial properties, of which there are more than a dozen. These properties, which include major basilicas such as St. Paul Outside the Walls and St. Mary Major, are marked as the Vatican’s through their flying of the papal flag.
Becker said he hopes his website will serve as a helpful resource for anyone looking for the exact Vatican flag design, at least until the Vatican issues some kind of clarification on what exactly the flag should look like.
“The papal flag is interesting because on the one hand, the Vatican is such a small state, but the papal flag is seen all over the world. Anywhere there’s a Catholic church, you might be likely to run into a papal flag,” he said.
“It would be nice if somebody at the Holy See could, through their website or wherever, make some design specifications more available … design specifications that manufacturers could rely on a bit more.”
The Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains in Cincinnati, Ohio. / Mitchell Chabot/Shutterstock
Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec 6, 2021 / 15:01 pm (CNA).
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati this week announced plans for groupings of parishes, called “familie… […]
San Antonio, Texas, Mar 29, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating the San Antonio City Council for potential First Amendment violations. The council voted last week to disinvite Chick-fil-A from opening a store in t… […]
Leave a Reply