Queen of Heaven
Queen of Heaven | |
|---|---|
| Queen of Heaven and Earth, Holy Queen | |
| Venerated in | Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, some Lutheran churches, Eastern Orthodoxy |
| Feast | 22 August (General Roman Calendar), 31 May (General Roman Calendar of 1960) |
| Attributes | The Mary, mother of Jesus crowned by the Holy Trinity, crown of stars, flowers |
| Patronage | Heaven, eternal salvation to humankind, redemption |
| Part of a series on the |
| Mariology of the Catholic Church |
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| Catholic Church portal |
Queen of Heaven (Latin: Regina Caeli) is a title given by the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, to Mary, mother of Jesus, and, to a lesser extent, in Anglicanism and Lutheranism. The title has long been a tradition, included in prayers and devotional literature and seen in Western art in the subject of the Coronation of the Virgin from the High Middle Ages, long before the Church gave it a formal definition status.
The Catholic teaching on this subject is expressed in the papal encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam, issued by Pope Pius XII in 1954. Therein, the pope states that Mary is called Queen of Heaven because her son, Jesus Christ, was charged as being "King of Israel" and the heavenly king of the universe. This would render the mother of the king as the "queen mother" of Israel.