When is Christ the King celebrated?

Each year we celebrate Christ’s sovereignty on the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the 34th Sunday in Ordinary Time. This year the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe is on November 20th, 2022.

When did the liturgical feast of Christ the King start?

Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925, but it was first celebrated in 1926. Originally, it was designated for late October, but Pope St. Paul VI changed it to the final Sunday of the liturgical year, which is the Sunday before the beginning of Advent. This corresponds well to the end of history when Christ returns as King, a subject which the liturgies of the first half of Advent will take up.

Why did Pope Pius XI institute this feast of Christ the King?

When Pope Pius instituted this feast, it was in response to an increase in secularism and atheism. Christ the King was – and is – the answer to all human problems. Thus, in the encyclical Quas Primas, the Pope wrote,

We remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ; and that We promised to do as far as lay in Our power. In the Kingdom of Christ, that is, it seemed to Us that peace could not be more effectually restored nor fixed upon a firmer basis than through the restoration of the Empire of Our Lord.