Old Latin Mass at the Vatican thrills traditionalists

A senior US cardinal, Pope Benedict XIV. With Leo’s express permission, he celebrated a traditional Latin mass in St. Peter’s Basilica; This thrilled traditionalist Catholics who felt abandoned after Pope Francis greatly restricted the ancient rite.

Several thousand pilgrims, many of them young families with many children and women covering their heads with lace veils, filled the basilica’s altar area to standing-room only capacity.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading conservative U.S. leader, presided over the two-and-a-half-hour service, which included hymns, incense and priests bowing before the altar with their backs to the faithful in the pews.

For many traditionalists, the moment was a concrete sign that Leo might be more sympathetic to their plight after feeling rejected by Francis and his 2021 crackdown on ancient rites.

Francis had taken action after the spread of the ancient rites, especially in the United States; This coincided with the rise of religiously inspired political conservatism and declining church attendance in more progressive congregations.

“I’m very hopeful,” said Argentinian pilgrimage organizer Rubén Peretó Rivas.

“The first signs of Pope Leo are dialogue and listening, truly listening to everyone.”

The latest rounds in the liturgical wars date back to the Second Vatican Council meetings in the 1960s that modernized the church.

The reforms included celebrating the Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin.

In the years that followed, the old Latin Mass was still present but not widespread.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI relaxed restrictions on this celebration as part of his general support for traditionalists who still cling to the old ceremony.

In one of the most controversial actions of his papacy, Francis in 2021 reversed Benedict’s 2007 reform and reimposed restrictions on celebrating the ancient Mass.

The spread of the epidemic has become a source of division in the church and is being exploited by Catholics who oppose Vatican II, Francis said.

But rather than healing divisions, Francis’ pressure appeared to create further tensions.

“We are orphans,” said Christian Marquant, the French organizer of Saturday’s pilgrimage.

Leo, the first pope in history to come from the United States, was elected by broad consensus among cardinals and said his goal was unity and reconciliation in the church.

Many conservatives and traditionalists called on him to heal the liturgical divisions that pervaded the Latin Rite in particular.

Following Leo’s election, Marquant wrote to Leo on behalf of 70 traditionalist groups, asking, among other things, for permission to celebrate a Mass according to the ancient rite at St. Peter’s during the traditionalists’ annual pilgrimage to Rome.

Marquant said Burke, who met with Leo on August 22, gave him the letter and Leo gave permission.

Immediately after his crackdown in 2021, Francis also allowed Latin masses to be celebrated in the basilica, but only low-ranking priests did so.

In 2023 and 2024, traditionalists could not find anyone willing to approach Francis and ask for permission, Marquant said.

On Saturday, Burke did not mention Francis, his edition or Leo in his sermon, the main part of which he delivered in Italian, Spanish, French and English.

But he repeatedly referred to Benedict and the 2007 reform that liberalized the ancient rites as if they were still in effect.

Thanks to Benedict’s reform, Burke said, “the whole church is maturing into a deeper understanding and love of the great gift of the sacraments, which have been handed down to us uninterruptedly from the apostolic tradition, from the apostles and their successors.”

Vatican documents leaked in July refuted Francis’s rationale for imposing the restrictions in the first place: Francis had said he was responding to “the wishes expressed” by bishops around the world who responded to a 2020 Vatican survey and his view of the Vatican doctrinal office.

But the documents suggested that the majority of Catholic bishops who responded to the survey expressed general satisfaction with the old Latin Rite and warned that restricting it would “do more harm than good.”