News: New papal tartan is added to the Scottish Register of Tartans

The new papal tartan, officially called the St Ninian's Day tartan, has been added to the Scottish Register of Tartans at reference 10282.

The tartan was designed by Matthew Newsome, a governor of the Scottish Tartans Authority and the Director of the Scottish Tartans Museum in Franklin, North Carolina, USA, in honour of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Scotland on St Ninian's Day, 16th September 2010.

The colours of the tartan reflect the beatification of Cardinal Newman and the heraldic colours of the Vatican. The broad white stripe contains eight threads, one for each Roman Catholic diocese in Scotland and the full threadcount is 452, which is the number of Catholic parishes in Scotland at the time of the papal visit.

Following more than 200 years of informal codification and recording of tartans, the Scottish Parliament passed the Scottish Register of Tartans Act in November 2008 and the Scottish Register of Tartans went live on 5 February. It is administered by the National Archives of Scotland and the Keeper of the Records of Scotland is now also the Keeper of the Scottish Register of Tartans.

For further details of this and many other tartans, visit the Scottish Register of Tartans.