Over tbe centuries, different forms of tonsure were adopted. In some religious orders, monks and friars to this day wear only a circle of hair around their shaven head. They are free to do so in the future.

Lately, many ecclesiastics have given up their tonsure and let their hair grow as soon as they have been ordained to the priesthood and left the seminary, Although no Vatican spokesman would officially comment on this point today, churchmen here suggested privately that the Pope and his advisers might have considered that the tonsure was keeping some young men from studying for the priesthood in an era of elaborate male hairstyles.

The Vatican newspaper L'Os servatore Romano noted tonight that the tonsure, once symbol of “abandonment of the world,” had almost completely lost that significance and had become an empty ceremony.

Lately, in some dioceses, bishops have only snipped the hair of new seminarians slightly whereas elsewhere future priests have still been expected to keep a large tonsure throughout their studies.

Churchmen here said that from now on clergymen could voluntarily continue the practice of tonsure either with symbolic snip or if they enter an order that prescribes it for its members.