Feast day: November 9
The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Honors the dedication of St. John Lateran in Rome, the cathedral church of the pope as bishop of Rome and, as its inscription proclaims, the mother and head of all the churches of the world.
On November 9 the whole Church celebrates the dedication of a single building in Rome — the Basilica of St. John Lateran — because of what that building uniquely is. Though St. Peter's is grander and more famous, the Lateran, not St. Peter's, is the cathedral church of the pope in his role as bishop of Rome, and it bears across its front the proud inscription that it is 'the mother and head of all the churches of the city and of the world.'
Its origins reach back to the dawn of the Church's freedom. The land was given to the Church by the Emperor Constantine around the year 311, as the persecutions ended, and the basilica he raised there — originally dedicated to the Savior — became the first great public church of Christendom and, for a thousand years, the residence of the popes and the center of the Church's life.
Within its walls many of the most important events of Church history unfolded: councils were held there, popes were enthroned there, and from there the faith was governed for centuries. Damaged, rebuilt, and restored many times across the ages, it remains the oldest of the four great basilicas of Rome and the senior church of the Western world.
That the universal Church keeps the feast of one local cathedral is itself the point of the celebration. The dedication of the Lateran is honored everywhere as a sign of the unity of all the scattered churches with the see of Rome and with one another — a feast of the one Church of Christ, built of living stones, of which this ancient building is the enduring symbol.
Not St. Peter's but the Lateran is the pope's true cathedral — the oldest public church in the West, given to the Church by the Emperor Constantine himself.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09014b.htm
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