VATICAN CITY (CNS) – After placing a woolen band around the shoulders of 44 new archbishops as they knelt before him, Pope Benedict XVI told them it was a reminder of their ties to heaven and earth and of their loyalty to Christ and the successor of Peter.

“You have been constituted in and for the great mystery of communion that is the Church, the spiritual edifice built upon Christ as the cornerstone, while in its earthly and historical dimension, it is built on the rock of Peter,” the pope said during his homily on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul.

However, he added, the “church is not a community of the perfect, but a community of sinners, obliged to recognize their need for God’s love, their need to be purified through the cross of Jesus Christ.”

Before celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict gave the archbishops from 23 countries the woolen pallium as a sign of their sharing with him authority over the faithful in their archdioceses.

The pallium is presented every year to new archbishops or those who have been assigned to a new archdiocese.

The archbishops included Archbishops Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia; William E. Lori of Baltimore; Samuel J. Aquila of Denver; and William C. Skurla, who leads the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh.

Two new archbishops were unable to attend the ceremony and received their palliums at home, making the final count 46 new archbishops from 24 countries, including South Korea, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica began with a fanfare of trumpets and “Tu es Petrus” sung by the Sistine Chapel Choir and the world-renowned Westminster Abbey choir.